IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

BEING  THE  VACATION  THOUGHTS 
OF  A  SCHOOLMISTRESS 


BY 

MARY    TAYLOR    BLAUVELT 

Author  of  "  The  Development  of  Cabinet 
Government  in  England" 


BOSTON 
SHERMAN,    FRENCH   &  COMPANY 

1911 


Copyright,  1911 
Sherman,  French  &*  Company 


TO 

NEENA,  CLAIRE  AND  KATHARINE 

FRIENDS  WHO  HAVE 

"HBLPED  ME  TO  GOOD  THOUGHTS" 


*  *  Love  is  the  white  heat  fusion  of 
the  intellect,  sensibility  and  wilP ' 

ANNA    EUGENIA    MORGAN 
Late  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy 
in  Wellesley  College 

' '  Love  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  law" 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     In  Cambridge  Backs 1 

II  Friendship        .......        6 

III  The  New  School  Mistress  ...      28 

IV  The  Artist      .      .      .      .       .      .       .51 

V  The    Artistic    Temperament     .      .      76 

VI  On   the    Criticism   of   Others  .      .      98 

VII  The  First   Great    Commandment  .    119 

VIII     Immortality 143 

IX  On   the  Writing  of   History    .      .168 


IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

It  is  by  the  waters  of  the  Cam,  in  Cambridge, 
England,  that  I  write.  I  am  an  American  teacher, 
and  I  came  over  here  this  summer  in  the  hope  of 
being  able  to  do  some  research  work  in  English 
libraries.  Scarcely  had  I  landed  when  I  was 
taken  ill,  so  that  considerable  time  had  to  be  spent 
in  a  nursing  home.  Now  that  I  am  better,  but 
still  unable  to  do  serious  work,  I  sit  a  great  deal 
in  the  college  backs,  lose  myself  in  the  beauty  of 
my  surroundings,  and  in  my  own  thoughts.  And 
since  I  have  had  to  give  up  the  work  which  I  had 
planned,  it  comforts  me  to  put  down  on  paper 
some  of  the  things  which  I  have  thought  about. 

Physical  infirmity  seems  to  me  an  ill  chiefly  be- 
cause it  prevents  work.  But  on  the  other  hand 
it  is  a  great  blessing  in  that  it  brings  out  human 
kindness ;  in  fact  the  trouble  seems  to  dwindle  into 
nothing,  and  leave  only  the  loving-kindness.  My 
English  friends  have  been  most  devoted  in  their 
attentions  to  me,  and  every  American  mail- 
steamer  brings  loving  messages  from  dear  ones 
far  away.  And  although  my  long-cherished 
plans  for  work  have  been  frustrated,  I  am  sur- 
prised to  find  that  I  am  not  unhappy.     On  the 


£  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

contrary  I  spend  my  time  in  pleasant  thinking, 
thinking  which  seems  to  me  almost  as  profitable 
as  the  work  would  have  been.  After  all,  when  we 
do  our  part  we  never  really  fail;  we  only  succeed 
in  a  different  way  from  that  in  which  we  intended. 
In  Great  St.  Mary's  church  here  there  are  some 
prayer-stools  on  which  are  the  words,  "Think  and 
Thank."  I  like  the  combination  of  injunctions. 
For  I  am  more  and  more  convinced  that  when  we 
truly  think,  that  is  when  the  mind  is  making  ac- 
tual progress,  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  both  happy 
and  thankful.  And  perhaps  physical  disability 
is  sometimes  sent  to  us  in  order  that  we  may  take 
time  to  think  and  thank,  in  order  that  the  soul 
may  have  a  prolonged  sabbath.  For  some  of  us 
who  make  a  business  of  accumulating  knowledge 
might  get  to  be  mere  crams  if  seasons  were  not 
sent  to  us  in  which  it  is  impossible  to  learn  more 
facts,  but  in  which  we  may  feel  and  assimilate 
those  which  we  already  know,  and  thus  translate 
our  knowledge  into  wisdom.  The  story  is  told  of 
St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  that  just  before  her  con- 
version she  prayed,  "St.  Benedict,  pray  to  God 
for  me  that  He  may  make  me  stay  three  months 
sick  in  bed."  Was  it  that  she  felt  the  need  of  a 
period  of  enforced  idleness,  that  she  might  rest  be- 
side still  waters  as  I  am  resting  this  summer?  I 
like  to  remember  that  our  word  school  is  derived 
from  the  word  Greek  word  gxoXt} — leisure.  But 
when  the  Greek  spoke  of  axolrj  he  did  not  mean 
idleness,  but  rather  that  absorption  of  the  mind  in 


IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS  3 

high  thinking  which  makes  us  feel  that  these  lives 
of  ours,  however  petty  and  sordid  they  may  seem 
at  times,  are  still  worth  living  because  they  are  ca- 
pable of  reaching  out  to  and  even  touching  that 
which  is  infinite  and  eternal.  So  perhaps  we  may 
be  better  able  to  do  and  bear  because  in  times  of 
ill  health  we  have  found  our  <rxoXvj,  our  true 
school. 

It  has  been  said  that  "Oxford  disheartens  a  man 
early."  Long  ago  I  spent  two  years  in  Oxford, 
and  lovely  as  I  found  the  beautiful  city,  I  came  to 
understand  this  saying.  Originality  is  often 
crushed  by  an  atmosphere  of  criticism,  by  the 
cynicism  and  lack  of  enthusiasm  characteristic 
of  and  cultivated  by  a  certain  type  of  Oxford  man. 
What  is  true  of  Oxford  is  I  suppose  also  in  a  cer- 
tain measure  true  of  Cambridge,  but  this  summer 
I  am  not  finding  it  so.  In  the  first  place  there  is 
a  difference  in  the  towns.  Oxford,  it  has  been  well 
said,  is  imposant,  while  Cambridge  is  intime. 
Then  too  it  is  vacation  time,  most  of  the  men 
have  gone  down,  I  am  myself  spending  the  summer 
not  in  working  but  in  dreaming,  and  day  dreams 
are  never  disheartening.  Since  I  cannot  make  his- 
torical researches,  I  am  surrendering  myself  to 
the  charm  of  the  place,  finding  in  it  a  constant 
demand  that  I  should  live  up  to  it,  that  there 
should  be  in  my  own  life  something  to  correspond 
to  the  beauty  of  King's  Chapel  and  of  Trinity 
Back. 

Is   beauty,   I  wonder,   conducive  to   work?     I 


4  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

remember  that  Goethe  and  some  other  literary 
men  have  preferred  to  write  in  very  bare  rooms, 
lest  the  beauty  about  them  should  prove  distract- 
ing, prevent  concentration.  I  suppose  that  it  is 
with  beauty  as  it  is  with  love.  We  may  make 
love  nothing  but  an  emotional  luxury,  and  so  we 
may  make  beauty  nothing  but  an  emotional  lux- 
ury. On  the  other  hand  as  love  may  be  the  great- 
est incentive  to  earnest  action,  to  high  living,  so 
beauty  may  also  be  such  an  incentive.  And  as  it 
is  allowable  to  have  times  in  which  we  simply  en- 
joy love,  so  also  it  is  allowable  to  have  times  in 
which  we  simply  enjoy  beauty.  "Come  ye  your- 
selves apart,  and  rest  awhile,"  rest  from  action  in 
order  that  ye  may  feel.  Only  let  the  feeling  be 
the  starting  point  for  new  action.  Or  is  it  rather 
that  after  a  time  we  must  begin  to  act  in  order 
that  the  action  may  be  the  starting  point  for  new 
feeling?  Is  feeling  the  end,  or  is  action  the  end? 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  feeling  is  the  greater, 
and  therefore  the  real  end,  only  as  there  can  be  no 
great  action  without  feeling,  so  there  can  be  no 
true  feeling  without  action. 

There  have  been  times  when  I  have  found  not 
only  the  English  university,  but  the  whole  Old 
World  disheartening,  because  of  the  Past  of  which 
it  speaks  so  loudly.  All  has  been  done  that  can  be 
done ;  I  am  borne  down  by  the  weight  of  the  Past. 
This  summer  I  am  not  having  that  experience 
either.  The  Past  seems  here  to  encourage  us  by 
the  memory  of  what  men  have  done,  and  to  call 


IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS  5 

upon  us  to  surpass  it.  There  is  something  too  in 
a  small  country  which  is  stimulating  to  ambition. 
The  scholars,  the  artists,  the  statesmen  live  near 
enough  to  each  other  to  know  and  help  each  other. 
Our  country  is  so  vast ;  each  thinker  lives  in  com- 
parative isolation.  And  then  Nature  in  England 
generally,  but  especially  here  on  the  edge  of  the 
fen  country,  is  kindly,  friendly  and  sympathetic, 
not  big  enough  to  dwarf  man.  I  believe  too  that 
the  mere  being  in  a  foreign  country  is  making  it 
possible  for  me  to  think  more  clearly  than  I  could 
at  home.  For  I  am  not  a  part  of  it  here,  and, 
being  in  a  sense  wholly  out  of  the  life  about  me,  I 
am  perhaps  better  able  to  collect  my  thoughts  on 
life  in  general. 

"He  who  hath  watch'd,  not  shared  the  strife, 
Knows  how  the  day  hath  gone.'* 

But  while  in  one  sense  I  am  out  of  the  life  here, 
in  another  sense  I  am  deeply  in  it.  For  I  love 
this  beautiful  England  and  feel  strongly  that  she 
is  my  mother-country,  that  I  am  just  a  tired  child 
come  home  to  rest. 


II 

FRIENDSDHIP 

This  is  an  age  in  which  women,  especially  in- 
tellectual women,  are  given  to  forming  strong 
friendships.  There  are  women  who  find  their  com- 
fort, their  strength,  their  inspiration  in  one  friend 
who  is  all  in  all  to  them; — others,  perhaps  of  a 
more  expansive  nature,  have  several  friends  each 
one  of  whom  is  in  her  way  supreme.  And  yet 
many  women  question  the  wisdom  of  these  friend- 
ships;  some  even  who  indulge  in  them  are  just  a 
little  ashamed  of  them;  the  world  is  inclined  to 
look  askance  at  them,  to  regard  them  as  abnormal 
feminine  weaknesses,  and  there  are  those  who  are 
heard  to  say  that  God  never  meant  it  to  be  so,  this 
dependence  upon  each  other,  this  almost  passionate 
devotion  between  persons  of  the  same  sex.  Per- 
haps we  do  not  remember  that  these  strong  friend- 
ships originated  not  with  women,  but  with  men, 
and  if  we  are  disposed  to  condemn  them  wholesale 
it  is  certainly  because  we  do  not  realize  how  much 
we  owe  to  them.  For  I  think  we  rarely  if  ever 
come  close  to  a  man  who  has  contributed  greatly 
to  the  order,  the  justice,  the  beauty,  the  thought 
of  the  world  without  finding  that  there  was  a  friend 
who  was  his  inspiration,  his  very  soul.     Occasion- 

6 


FRIENDSHIP  7 

ally  the  wife  has  been  this  friend,  but  previous  to 
the  nineteenth  century  this  was  rare,  it  was  gen- 
erally some  other  man.  Sometimes  both  friends 
became  famous,  sometimes  only  one,  but  the  other 
was  always  there.  The  time  would  fail  us  to  tell 
of  David  and  Jonathan,  of  Achilles  and  Patroclus, 
of  Damon  and  Pythias,  of  Orestes  and  Pylades, 
of  Socrates  and  Plato,  of  Paul  and  Timothy,  who 
through  friendship  overcame  mountains  of  diffi- 
culty, intellectual,  moral  and  physical,  and  of 
whom  the  world  is  slowly  beginning  to  be  worthy, 
since  it  holds  them  in  grateful  remembrance. 
Nay,  is  it  not  almost  blasphemous  to  ask  whether 
God  approves  of  such  a  relationship,  when  we  re- 
member that  our  Lord  Himself  sanctified  it,  for 
among  the  twelve  who  "continued  with  Him  in  His 
temptations,"  there  was  one  who  will  be  known  to 
all  time  as  "the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved?" 

Strong  friendship  is  the  supreme  characteristic 
of  that  wonderful  period  of  intellectual  and  spirit- 
ual awakening  which  embraces  the  Renascence  and 
Reformation.  These  movements  differed  in  differ- 
ent countries,  but  everywhere  there  was  the  same 
passionate  sense  of  the  value  of  friendship  and  of 
fellow-work,  of  what  Ruskin  calls  "co-working  and 
army  fellowship."  I  like  to  think  of  Rufus 
Mutianus,  that  typical  son  of  the  Renascence, 
whose  real  name  was  Conrad  Muth,  but  whose 
friends  called  him  Rufus  because  of  his  red  hair, 
while  after  the  fashion  of  the  time  they  latinized 
his  last  name ;  a  man  who  was  the  very  incarnation 


8  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

of  friendship,  a  man  who,  like  Jesus  and  Socrates, 
wrote  nothing,  but  who  gathered  about  him  a  band 
of  friends  whom  he  inspired  to  think  and  write 
great  things.  Then  from  Italy  we  find  Michael 
Angelo  writing,  "I  cannot  enjoy  life  without  the 
soul,"  and  by  the  soul  he  means  his  friend  Tom- 
maso  Cavalieri.  Again  in  Germany  we  rejoice  in 
Luther  and  Melancthon,  Luther  with  his  clear  head 
and  vigorous,  sometimes  harsh  will,  Melancthon 
with  what  might  be  called  his  almost  artistic  love 
of  learning,  his  gentleness  and  sweetness,  combined 
with  a  certain  indecision  and  weakness  of  practical 
judgment,  which  sometimes  accompanies  breadth 
of  view.  I  like  even  better  to  remember  Staupitz, 
that  earlier  friend  of  Luther,  the  father-confessor 
who  was  the  first  to  understand  the  young  monk, 
so  oppressed  with  the  burden  of  evil,  and  to  teach 
him  the  meaning  of  the  words,  "I  believe  in  the  for- 
giveness of  sins."  When  the  pupil  became  the 
master,  Staupitz  rejoiced  in  the  inversion  of  po- 
sition which  he  had  foreseen  from  the  beginning. 
He  did  not  follow  Luther  out  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  the  historic  church  dear  to  him  because  of 
so  many  associations,  but  it  is  good  to  remember 
that  a  difference  of  opinion  on  even  so  vital  a  mat- 
ter could  not  break  the  friendship.  In  the  last 
year  of  his  life,  1524,  we  find  him  writing  a  letter 
in  which  he  thanks  his  "beloved  Martin"  for  hav- 
ing led  him  away  "to  the  living  pastures  from  the 
husks  for  the  pigs,"  and  speaks  of  his  love  for  him 
as  "passing  the  love  of  women."     As  for  Luther 


FRIENDSHIP  9 

he  always  retained  for  Staupitz  the  warm  affec- 
tion that  it  is  natural  to  feel  for  the  first  person 
who  has  understood  and  been  able  to  help. 
Throughout  his  life  he  speaks  of  him  as  his  spirit- 
ual father,  toward  its  close  he  thanks  God  that  he 
had  been  "helped  out  of  his  temptations  by  Dr. 
Staupitz,  without  whom  he  would  have  been  swal- 
lowed up  in  them  and  perished."  Surely  here  was 
a  love  stronger  than  death,  since  in  that  bitter  age 
it  was  stronger  than  creeds. 

I  myself  have  found  an  especial  delight  in  three- 
cornered  friendships.  There  is  a  fullness  and  com- 
pleteness about  three  which  two  cannot  quite  have ; 
moreover  when  full  and  free  fellowship  among 
three  is  possible,  it  has  none  of  the  morbidness 
which  is  sometimes  an  element  in  the  dual  friend- 
ship. For  there  is  certainly  a  mystic  perfection 
in  the  number  three  which  man  did  not  invent; 
every  material  object  has  three  dimensions,  every 
polygon  must  have  at  least  three  sides,  the  human 
mind  has  three  elements,  intellect,  sensibility  and 
will ;  at  least  three  are  necessary  to  make  a  family, 
father,  mother  and  child;  even  the  Godhead,  we 
are  taught,  and  reasoning  from  analogy  I  find  it 
easy  to  believe,  fulfills  itself  in  three  Persons.  So 
I  have  sometimes  thought  that  it  takes  three  to 
make  an  absolutely  complete  and  perfect  friend- 
ship, although  that  is  a  matter  of  temperament, 
and  generally,  perhaps  always,  two  of  the  three 
are  a  little  closer  to  each  other  than  the  third  can 
be  to  either  of  them. 


10  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

The  Renascence  period  furnishes  a  beautiful  and 
well-nigh  perfect  example  of  a  triangular  friend- 
ship   in    that   which   united    Colet,   Erasmus    and 
More.      Colet,  a  man  of  twenty-six,  "fell  in  love," 
Mr.  Seebohm  tells  us,  with  More,  a  lad  of  fourteen, 
More  whose  wit,  wisdom  and  sweetness  no  man  of 
culture  could  resist.     The  friendship  thus  begun 
lasted   until   death,    Colet's    death,   parted   them, 
strengthened  not  weakened  by  the  fact  that  some 
years  later  More  formed  another  friendship  which 
partook  even  more  than  his  affection  for  Colet  of 
the  nature  of  love.     For  we  all  know  the  story  of 
how  Erasmus  and  More  met  at  a  dinner  table,  and 
neither  knowing  who  the  other  was,  an  argument 
arose,  in  which  each  admired  the  knowledge  and 
skill  of  his  antagonist  to  such  an  extent  that  Eras- 
mus cried  out,  "Aut  tu  es  Morus,  aut  mullus"  to 
which  More  replied,  "Aut  tu  es  Erasmus,  aut  di- 
abolus."     The  friendship  formed  that  day  became 
famous  throughout  Christendom,  but  while  poster- 
ity applauds  there  were  contemporaries  who,  like 
some  of  our  contemporaries  under  similar  circum- 
stances, sneered.     Thus  Tyndale  in  an  attack  upon 
More,  sarcastically  speaks  of  Erasmus  as  "More's 
darling,"  but  More  did  not  flinch ;  he  accepted  the 
term.     "Erasmus,   my   darling,"   he   says   in   the 
reply  written  for  all  the  world  to  read,  "shall  be 
my  dear  darling  still."     We  find  him  at  one  time 
writing  to  his  friend  that  if  there  was  one  thought 
of  ambition  in  his  mind,  it  was  the  pleasure  that  he 
felt  in  knowing  that  his  name  would  always  be  as- 


FRIENDSHIP  11 

sociated  with  that  of  Erasmus,  while  Erasmus  de- 
clares that  More's  presence  is  "more  sweet  to  him 
than  anything  in  life,"  and  adds  "In  More  mihi 
videor  extinctus,  adeo  ma  <puxr}  juxta  Pythago- 
ram  duobus  erat."  Nor  was  Colet  crowded  out ;  as 
long  as  he  lived  he  was  loved  and  revered  by  both 
friends,  his  holiness,  Mr.  Hutton  tells  us,  an  in- 
spiration to  Erasmus,  while  his  perfect  sanity  of 
judgment  was  a  wise  restraint  upon  More.  "For 
centuries,"  says  More  writing  after  his  death,  for 
he  was  the  first  of  the  three  to  die,  "we  have  not 
had  among  us  any  man  more  learned  or  more 
holy."  The  two  who  were  left  were  drawn  closer 
to  each  other  by  the  memory  of  him  whom  they 
had  both  loved. 

Nor  was  even  this  three-cornered  friendship  ex- 
clusive, there  was  plenty  of  room  for  other  affec- 
tions. More's  family  relations,  his  beautiful  home 
life  are  too  well  known  to  need  comment  here,  but 
there  were  other  friends  too.  Thus  we  find  him 
writing  to  Cuthbert  Tunstall:  "Although  every 
letter  I  receive  from  you,  dearest  friend,  is  very 
pleasant  to  me,  yet  that  which  you  wrote  last  is 
most  welcome,  for  besides  the  praise  which  the  rest 
of  your  letters  deserve  for  their  eloquence,  the  last 
yields  a  peculiar  grace,  for  that  it  contains  your 
own  opinion  (I  would  that  it  were  as  true  as  it  is 
favorable)  of  my  Utopia.  I  almost  persuade  my- 
self that  all  those  things  which  you  spoke  of  it  are 
true,  knowing  you  to  be  far  from  all  dissimulation, 
and  myself  too  humble  to  need  flattery  and  too 


1%  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

dear  to  you  to  be  mocked.  Wherefore,  whether 
you  have  seen  the  truth  unfeignedly,  I  rejoice  in 
your  judgment,  or  whether  your  affection  to  me 
hath  blinded  your  judgment,  I  am  no  less  de- 
lighted by  your  love."  Again  to  the  same  friend, 
"The  amber  which  you  sent  me,  a  precious  sepul- 
chre of  flies  was  in  many  respects  most  welcome  to 
me;  for  the  matter  thereof  may  bear  comparison 
in  color  and  brightness  with  any  precious  stone, 
and  the  form  is  more  excellent  because  it  represents 
the  figure  of  a  heart,  as  it  were  the  emblem  of  our 
love;  from  which  I  take  your  meaning  to  be  that 
between  us  it  will  never  fly  away,  and  yet  be  al- 
ways without  corruption ;  because  I  see  the  fly 
which  hath  wings  like  Cupid,  and  is  as  fickle,  so 
shut  up  and  enclosed  in  the  amber  that  it  cannot 
fly  away,  and  embalmed  and  preserved  that  it  can- 
not perish.  I  am  not  so  much  troubled"  (a  sure 
proof  of  friendship)  "that  I  cannot  send  you  a 
like  gift,  for  I  know  you  do  not  expect  an  inter- 
change of  tokens." 

It  was  the  period  of  the  Renascence  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  was  richest  in  these  romantic 
masculine  friendships.  We  are  living  now  in  an 
age  which  for  women  is  a  Renascence  ;  we  are  being 
re-born,  finding  our  own  minds,  finding  our  own 
souls,  and  in  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  awaken- 
ing which  has  come  to  us,  it  is  natural  that  we 
should  repeat  the  story  of  the  Renascence;  that 
friendship  should  play  the  part  with  us  now  that 
it  played  with  men  then.     For  friendship  is  the 


FRIENDSHIP  13 

most  intellectual  and  spiritual  of  all  relationships ; 
it  is  not  in  any  degree  founded  upon  physical  de- 
sire, nor  upon  the  protective  instinct,  nor  as  some 
marriages  are  upon  the  hope  of  gain,  material, 
social  or  political, 

"With  gold  so  much,  birth,  power,  repute  so  much, 
Or  beauty,  youth  so  much  in  lack  of  these ! " 

Friends  are  friends  simply  because  they  like  to  be 
together ;  to  share  each  other's  thoughts,  to  live  in 
a  greater  or  less  degree  their  intellectual,  spirit- 
ual and  emotional  lives  in  common,  but  with  think- 
ing persons  the  emotional  is  largely  the  result  of 
the  intellectual  and  spiritual. 

Hence  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  people  who  do 
not  have  fairly  strong  intellectual  and  spiritual 
natures,  those  whose  lives  are  practical  but  not 
intellectual,  moral  perhaps  but  not  spiritual,  can- 
not, strictly  speaking,  have  friends.  Such  persons 
often  do  have  beautiful  family  relationships ;  the 
emotional  nature  is  satisfied  in  the  family,  in  the 
marriage  which  may  have  been  founded  upon  pas- 
sion, or  may  even  have  been  entered  upon  in  a  very 
prosaic  and  businesslike  way?  but  which  has  become 
a  matter  of  mutual  esteem,  of  being  used  to  each 
other,  dependent  upon  each  other,  the  married 
pair  having  so  long  shared  all  the  detail  of  life  that 
they  have  become  so  adapted  to  each  other,  that 
it  is  difficult  to  adapt  themselves  to  any  one  else, 
even  in  such  small  matters  as  the  hours  of  meals 


14  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

or  the  way  in  which  coffee  should  be  served.     Be- 
tween parents  and  children  there  is  the  physical 
tie,  the  sense  of  gratitude  and  duty  on  both  sides, 
the  protective  instinct  at  first  of  the  older  for  the 
younger,  later  perhaps   of  the   younger   for  the 
older  ;  between  brothers  and  sisters  the  feeling  that 
blood    is     thicker    than    water,    the    similarities 
founded  on  common  antecedents,  common  and  lim- 
ited environment;  and  in  all  the  family  relation- 
ships a  strong  sense  of  belonging  to  each  other, 
coupled  in  these  simple  families  with  the  fact  that 
no  one  else  belongs  to  them,  since  they  have  no 
real  friendships.     They  have  neighbors  to  whom 
they  are  neighborly,  for  human  nature,  especially 
simple  human  nature,  is  kind,  but  they  can  hardly 
be  called  friends ;  they  are  people  with  whom  they 
gratify  the  natural  social  instincts,  talk  over  the 
every-day  of  life,  help  in  trouble  or  are  helped 
by,  but  one  neighbor  does  almost  as  well  as  an- 
other, provided  he  be  kind  and  sociable,  the  family 
is  all  in  all. 

These  natural  and  physical  relationships  are 
probably  even  in  the  cultured  family  stronger  than 
the  intellectual  and  spiritual,  for  even  when  the 
members  of  such  a  family  are  so  unfortunate  as 
to  be  lacking  in  congeniality  there  is  generally  a 
great  deal  of  affection ;  at  very  bottom  even  the 
uncongenial  sister  is  commonly  more,  though  less 
consciously  loved,  than  the   congenial  friend. 

But  friendship  is  fellowship,  it  is  founded  upon 
vital  congeniality  of  spirit,  and  where  this  does 


FRIENDSHIP  15 

not  exist,  there  can  be  no  friendship.  For  this 
reason  the  Greeks,  whose  tendency  was  perhaps  to 
over-estimate  the  intellectual  and  spiritual, 
thought  friendship  the  holiest  of  all  relationships, 
far  holier  than  marriage.  And  I  am  not  sure  that 
a  perfect  friendship,  a  friendship  free  from  the 
flaws  of  which  I  shall  presently  speak,  is  not  holier 
than  a  fairly  comfortable  marriage  which  does 
not  include  friendship.  If  the  highest  marriages 
are  higher  than  the  highest  friendships,  it  is  be- 
cause they  have  in  them  every  element  of  friend- 
ship and  much  more  besides. 

The  strongest  friendships  are  ordinarily  based 
not  upon  character,  but  upon  spiritual  affinity ; 
that  is,  there  is  more  of  loving  than  of  liking  in 
them.  For  loving  is  not  deeper,  stronger  liking, 
it  is  an  altogether  different  thing.  We  like  a  per- 
son because  of  his  qualities  ;  if  we  find  that  we  have 
been  mistaken  in  these  qualities  we  cease  to  like 
him.  But  we  go  on  loving  no  matter  what  dis- 
coveries we  may  make ;  for  although  the  character 
may  be  in  some  respects  objectionable,  we  feel  that 
we  are  not  mistaken  in  the  spirit  that  lies  beneath 
the  character,  and  we  love  not  because  of  the  char- 
acter, but  because  of  the  spirit  that  answers  to  our 
spirit.  So  when  friendship  is  absolutely  ideal  and 
equal,  there  is  no  shame  in  the  presence  of  one's 
friend.  I  may  sorrow  deeply  over  my  fault,  but 
I  am  not  ashamed  to  have  my  friend  know  about 
it,  for  she,  like  God,  understands  fully,  and  so 
while  she  sorrows  with  me  over  my  sin,  her  love  is 


16  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

strengthened,  not  weakened  by  it.  In  literature  I 
know  of  no  more  beautiful  friendship  than  that 
between  Meredith's  "Diana  of  the  Crossways,"  and 
Lady  Emma  Dunstane,  and  the  best  part  of  it  is 
that  when  Diana  has  sinned,  she  goes  to  Lady 
Emma  with  her  story,  fully  expecting  the  sympa- 
thy that  she  receives;  she  is  ashamed  of  her  sin, 
but  she  is  not  ashamed  that  Lady  Emma  should 
know  it.  And  in  this  affair  Diana  is  greater  than 
Lady  Emma,  for  it  takes  more  love  and  trust  to 
be  sure  of  receiving  sympathy  in  such  a  case  than 
it  takes  to  give  it. 

"  I  bow  before  the  noble  mind 
That  freely  some  great  wrong  forgives, 
Yet  nobler  is  the  one  forgiven, 
Who  bears  that  burden  well  and  lives." 

I  like  to  remember  too  that  St.  John  was  the  only 
other  apostle  present  when  St.  Peter  denied  his 
Lord,  and  from  that  time  we  find  St.  Peter  and  St. 
John  inseparable. 

When  we  define  taste  in  the  largest  and  deepest 
sense,  I  suppose  we  love  our  friends  more  because 
their  taste  is  in  harmony  with  ours  than  because 
their  characters  are  in  such  harmony,  for  taste  is 
really  a  deeper  and  truer  manifestation  of  spirit 
than  is  character.  What  a  man  is  depends  not 
so  much  upon  what  he  does  as  upon  what  he  likes, 
though  of  course  doing  sometimes  begets  liking.'1 

i  "  I  want  you  to  think  a  little  of  the  deep  significance 
of  the  word  taste,  for  no  statement  of  mine  has  been  more 


FRIENDSHIP  17 

A  distinction,  however,  must  be  made  between 
taste  and  tastes ;  it  is  only  the  former  that  is  es- 
sential. It  is  not  necessary  that  my  friend  and  I 
should  always  care  for  the  same  people,  the  same 
books,  the  same  pictures,  the  same  music;  but 
underneath  the  tastes  we  must  feel  that  the  taste 
is  essentially  the  same,  though  some  of  its  mani- 
festations may  differ  or  even  be  antagonistic. 

While  there  can  be  liking  without  loving,  there 
probably  cannot  be  loving  such  as  friends  have 
for  each  other  without  some  liking.  For  while 
when  we  once  begin  to  love,  we  continue  to  do  so 
no  matter  what  discoveries  we  may  make,  we  prob- 
ably do  not  begin  to  love  where  the  faults  most 
obnoxious  to  us  are  present,  for  these  we  are  quick 
to  detect,  and  they  are  an  effectual  bar  to  love. 
Sometimes  we  begin  with  loving  and  proceed  to  lik- 
ing, sometimes  we  begin  with  liking  and  proceed  to 
loving.  In  the  former  case  the  friendship  is 
formed  rapidly,  for  the  friends  do  not  have  to 

earnestly  or  oftener  controverted  than  that  good  taste  is 
essentially  a  moral  quality.  ,  .  .  Taste  is  not  only  a 
part  and  index  of  morality,  it  is  the  only  morality.  The 
first  and  last  and  closest  trial  question  to  any  living  crea- 
ture is,  What  do  you  like?  Tell  me  what  you  like,  and  I 
will  tell  you  what  you  are.  Go  out  into  the  street  and  ask 
the  first  man  or  woman  that  you  meet  what  their  taste  is, 
and  if  they  answer  candidly,  you  know  them  body  and  soul. 
And  the  object  of  the  true  education  is  to  make  people 
not  only  do  the  right  things,  but  enjoy  the  right  things, 
not  merely  industrious  but  to  love  industry,  not  merely 
learned  but  to  love  knowledge,  not  merely  pure  but  to 
love  purity;  not  merely  just,  but  to  hunger  and  thirst  after 
justice." — Ruskin  "Crown  of  Wild  Olive." 


18  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

learn  to  know  each  other,  they  know  and  love  per- 
haps at  first  sight.  In  a  highly  sensitive  mood 
two  spirits  come  into  contact,  and  each  recognizes 
in  the  other  the  counterpart  of  itself.  Sometimes 
this  is  a  delusion,  when  the  moment  of  exaltation 
is  over  they  find  they  they  have  been  mistaken, 
that  they  have  been  in  love  with  love,  not  with  each 
other,  but  sometimes  it  is  the  beginning  of  a  real 
and  powerful  friendship.  There  is  generally 
great  spiritual  excitement  at  first,  but  as  the 
friends  come  to  know  each  other  practically  as 
they  have  from  the  beginning  known  each  other 
spiritually  this  calms  down,  only  to  re-appear 
when  there  is  something  special,  some  great  joy 
or  sorrow  to  call  it  forth. 

The  friendships  that  begin  with  liking  are 
slower  and  more  commonplace.  People  are 
thrown  together,  work  together,  think  together, 
approve  of  each  other's  principles  and  opinions, 
share  each  other's  joys  and  sorrows,  trials  and 
temptations,  until  by  degrees  they  recognize  that 
they  are  necessary  to  each  other,  that  so  far  as 
trust,  admiration,  tenderness  and  mutual  service 
constitute  love,   they   love  each  other. 

This  is  the  safer  and  surer  friendship;  some- 
times I  think  that  it  is  the  better,  but  then  I  re- 
member that  when  Socrates  had  come  to  this  con- 
clusion, he  though  that  he  heard  a  voice  saying  in 
his  ear  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  impiety,  and  be- 
cause he  was  afraid  of  the  God-Love,  he  made  a 
solemn  recantation.    This  quiet  and  comparatively 


FRIENDSHIP  19 

unemotional  friendship  is  certainly  the  safer;  we 
run  no  risk  of  being  mistaken  in  ourselves  or  in  the 
other;  nor  is  there  the  excitement  at  the  beginning 
which  for  some  natures  takes  so  much  strength ;  it 
is  "for  help  and  comfort  in  all  the  passages  of  life 
and  death" ;  perhaps  for  those  of  us  who  are  only 
average  beings,  it  may  be  just  as  helpful,  help  us 
to  live  our  average  lives  as  well  as  that  other 
friendship,  but  after  all  it  is  not  the  highest,  for 
as  Socrates  points  out,  great  things  are  not 
born  of  it,  it  is  not  by  it  that  creative  souls  are 
stimulated  to  create.  And  perhaps  it  is  well  that 
creative  aspirations  should  sometimes  be  aroused 
even  in  those  of  us  who  are  not  capable  of  creating 
much,  that  the  spiritual  nature  (and  what  is 
spiritual  is  always  creative,  it  is  the  spirit  that 
giveth  life)  should  be  consciously  stirred,  if  only 
that  we  may  thereby  appreciate  the  creations  of 
others.  For  whatever  is  spiritual  uplifts  us  to 
Him  who  is  Spirit.  "Love  is  of  God,  and  he  that 
loveth"  (not  loveth  God,  but  loveth  any  one)  "is 
born  of  God,  and  knoweth  God."  "Blessed  are 
the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God,"  and 
nothing  purifies  the  heart  as  love  does,  for  where 
love  is  there  is  no  room  for  vulgarity.  Moreover 
when  the  mind  is  in  this  exalted  state,  it  is  too  up- 
lifted to  feel  petty  annoyances,  and  it  is  not  un- 
usual for  the  body  to  be  insensible  to  pain  because 
of  love. 

Then  since  friendship  is  such  a  high  and  holy 
thing,  since  men  have  always  had  extreme  friend- 


20  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

ships  with  profit  not  only  to  themselves  but  to  the 
world,  why  should  such  friendships  between  women 
be  looked  upon  askance?  In  order  to  be  happy 
and  useful,  woman  must  have  her  emotional  nature 
satisfied,  and  must  have  work  to  do  which  will  give 
her  a  place  in  the  world,  make  her  feel  that  she  is 
worth  while.  The  married  woman  finds  both  her 
work  and  the  satisfaction  of  her  emotional  nature 
in  marriage.  The  old  maid  of  a  by-gone  gener- 
ation was  unhappy  and  disagreeable,  when  she  was 
unhappy  and  disagreeable,  because  there  was  no 
person  and  no  definite  work  which  she  could  call 
her  own.  The  unmarried  woman  now  tends  to 
find  her  work  in  some  business  or  profession ;  why 
should  not  her  emotional  nature  be  satisfied  in 
friendship,  as  the  married  woman's  is  in  mar- 
riage? 

I  suppose  that  the  answer  of  the  objectors  would 
be  that  these  friendships  take  too  much  strength 
with  too  little  results.  To  most  people  emotional 
situations  are  a  strain,  the  first  ecstasy  of  a  sud- 
den friendship,  like  the  first  ecstasy  of  love  be- 
tween the  sexes,  takes  strength.  Nor  is  it  anything 
against  either  relationship  that  it  takes  strength 
at  first, — all  great  things  take  strength,  the 
thorough  enjoyment  of  great  music,  great  pic- 
tures, great  books,  how  much  more  a  great  love? 
The  question  is  not  does  it  take  strength,  but  does 
it  give  as  much  as  it  takes?  Are  the  joy  and 
pain  with  which  love  begins  travail  throes  from 
which  something  will  be  born?  or  is  the  so-called 


FRIENDSHIP  21 

love  merely  what  Mazzini  has  described  as  "Pego- 
isme  a  deux  personnes,  a  jealous  and  convul- 
sive passion,  half  pride,  half  thirst  of  enjoyment 
which  narrows  the  sphere  of  our  activity,  and 
causes  us  to  forget  our  duties  both  toward  our 
country   and  toward  humanity?" 

Now  however  emotional  and  absorbed  lovers  may 
be  at  first,  there  is  little  danger  that  love  will  take 
their  strength  or  narrow  them  for  any  length  of 
time.  For  marriage  means  new  work  whether  the 
married  wish  it  or  not,  and  in  the  multiplicity  of 
duties  the  conscious  emotionalism  dies  out;  only 
a  blessed  sense  of  companionship  is  left.  I  know 
a  woman  who  is  a  very  emotional  friend;  she  once 
told  me  that  it  was  well  that  she  had  never  mar- 
ried, for  she  would  have  been  a  more  emotional 
wife  than  any  man  could  stand.  But  darning 
stockings  and  calculating  expenses  would  prob- 
ably have  cured  her  of  over-emotionalism;  she 
would  have  been  a  less  emotional  wife  than  she  was 
a  friend. 

And  of  course  the  work  that  marriage  brings 
with  it  is  a  blessing  in  itself,  apart  from  the 
quieting  of  the  emotional  nature.  Society  knows 
that  it  will  almost  always  gain  by  marriage,  not 
only  in  the  perpetuation  of  the  race,  but  also  in 
the  greater  attention  to  business  on  the  part  of 
the  man,  the  broadening  of  social  interests  on  the 
part  of  the  woman,  and  in  the  development  of 
character  and  deeper  sympathies  which  come  to 
both  from  the  constant  sacrifices  which  they  have 


22  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

to  make  for  each  other  and  for  their  children,  the 
problems  which  they  have  to  solve  together,  the 
sufferings,  the  anxieties  and  the  joys  which  come 
to  a  family,  and  which  cannot  come  to  isolated  in- 
dividuals. 

But  society  is  not  so  sure  that  it  will  gain  by 
friendship,  for  generally  no  new  duties  are  abso- 
lutely forced  upon  us  with  it;  there  is  the  oppor- 
tunity, and  to  certain  temperaments  there  is  a 
strong  temptation  to  make  enjoying  each  other 
the  main  thing  in  life.  If  this  temptation  is 
yielded  to  the  emotionalism  continues  and  becomes 
morbid,  and  there  is  not  the  development  that  mar- 
riage brings.  For  women  the  danger  is  greater 
than  for  men,  partly  because  we  have  not  natur- 
ally so  many  interests,  partly  because  we  are  not 
so  strong  physically,  and  possibly  in  some  cases 
because  we  are  more  demonstrative,  and  demon- 
strations of  emotionalism  tend  to  increase  the 
emotionalism.  It  may  be  that  it  would  be  better 
that  women  should  live  in  this  respect  more  as 
men  do,  with  less  physical  expression  of  affection. 
Friendship  is  a  spiritual  relationship;  why  should 
it  need  physical  expression? 

Perhaps  friendship  is  almost  too  blissful  to  be  as 
developing  in  some  respects  as  is  marriage ;  there 
is  too  little  friction  in  it,  for  the  circumstances  of 
friendship  do  not  bring  out,  as  the  circumstances 
of  marriage  do,  those  little  commonplace  differ- 
ences which  must  exist  even  between  those  who  in 
all  important  matters  are  well  adapted  to  each 


FRIENDSHIP  23 

other.  And  in  the  other  family  relations  those  be- 
tween parents  and  children,  brothers  and  sisters, 
there  is  often  a  real  uncongeniality ;  there  are  in 
almost  every  family  certain  members  who,  if  it 
were  not  for  the  tie  of  blood  could  not  be  friends, 
and  in  the  adapting  themselves  to  each  other, 
there  is  a  discipline  which  means  breadth  and  self- 
control.  Mr.  Chesterton  is  right  when  he  main- 
tains that  the  family  is  a  good  institution  quite 
as  much  because  it  is  uncongenial  as  because  it  is 
congenial.  Friendship  is  narrower  than  the  fam- 
ily relation  just  because  it  is  more  congenial. 

The  great  safeguard  against  both  the  over- 
emotionalism  and  the  narrowness  of  friendship  is 
in  work.  It  is  only  when  emotionalism  is  followed 
by  nothing  else  that  it  defeats  its  own  end  and  uses 
up  strength  instead  of  creating  it.  For  passion 
is  energy,  but  energy  must  find  an  outlet  in  work, 
physical  or  mental,  else  it  feeds  upon  itself.  Since 
friendship  does  not  necessarily  bring  new  work 
with  it  as  marriage  does  let  the  friends  either  find 
some  new  work  to  do,  or  make  the  old  work  better 
because  of  their  friendship.  Let  the  new  emotion- 
alism mean  new  life,  let  the  new  life  go  into  the 
work,  make  the  friendship  in  some  sense  creative. 
Then  the  friends  will  not  only  be  saved  from  a 
dangerous  emotional  strain,  but  they  will  accom- 
plish something  that  will  be  useful  to  themselves 
and  to  others,  and  the  friendship  will  be  made 
more  secure,  since  growth  is  an  essential  to  per- 
manent   friendship.     Furthermore    there    will    be 


24  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

little  danger  of  exclusiveness  or  jealousy.  It 
makes  very  little  difference  what  my  exact  place 
is  with  my  friend;  probably  she  does  not  know. 
It  is  enough  that  we  love  each  other,  and  that  we 
help  each  other  to  live  our  lives  and  to  do  our 
work. 

I  had  a  teacher  who  used  to  say,  "Love  is  the 
white  heat  fusion  of  the  intellect,  sensibility  and 
will."  The  difficulty  with  many  friendships  is 
that  it  is  the  sensibility,  the  emotional  nature 
alone,  which  is  at  a  white  heat.  Let  the  intellect 
and  will  do  their  part,  and  there  will  be  little 
danger.  The  salvation  of  friendship  as  of  every- 
thing else  lies  in  symmetry; — the  height,  the 
breadth  and  the  depth  of  it  should  be  equal. 

It  is  Plato  who  has  best  summed  up  the  whole 
matter.  And  I  think  he  knew  of  what  he  wrote, 
for  had  not  Socrates  been  the  lover  and  he  himself 
the  beloved?  and  have  not  Europe  and  America 
been  the  better  for  more  than  two  thousand  years 
because  these  two  men  loved  each  other?  Listen 
then  to  what  the  wise  woman  of  Mantineia  said  to 
Socrates : 

"Men  whose  bodies  only  are  creative  betake 
themselves  to  women  and  beget  children, — this  is 
the  character  of  their  love.  But  creative  souls, 
for  there  certainly  are  men  who  are  more  creative 
in  their  souls  than  in  their  bodies,  conceive  that 
which  is  proper  for  the  soul  to  receive  or  retain. 
And  what  are  these  conceptions?  wisdom  and  vir- 
tue in  general.     And  such  creators  are  poets  and 


FRIENDSHIP  25 

all  artists  who  are  deserving  of  the  name  inventor. 
But  the  greatest  and  fairest  sort  of  wisdom  by  far 
is  that  which  is  concerned  with  the  ordering  of 
states  and  families,  and  which  is  called  temperance 
and  justice.  And  he  who  in  youth  has  the  seed 
of  these  planted  in  him,  and  is  himself  inspired, 
when  he  comes  to  maturity  desires  to  beget  and 
generate.  He  wanders  about  seeking  beauty  that 
he  may  beget  offspring,  for  in  deformity  he  will 
beget  nothing,  and  naturally  embraces  the  beauti- 
ful rather  than  the  deformed  body ;  above  all  when 
he  finds  a  fair  and  noble  and  well-nurtured  soul, 
he  embraces  the  two  in  one  person,  and  to  such  an 
one  he  is  full  of  speech  about  virtue  and  the  nature 
and  pursuits  of  a  good  man;  and  he  tries  to  edu- 
cate him,  and  at  the  touch  of  the  beautiful  which 
is  ever-present  to  his  memory,  even  when  absent, 
he  brings  forth  that  which  he  had  conceived  long 
before,  and  in  company  with  him  tends  that  which 
he  brings  forth;  and  they  are  married  by  a  far 
nearer  tie,  and  have  a  closer  friendship  than  those 
who  beget  mortal  children,  for  the  children  who 
are  their  common  offspring  are  fairer  and  more 
immortal.  Who,  when  he  thinks  of  Homer  and 
Hesiod  and  other  great  poets,  would  not  rather 
have  their  children  than  the  ordinary  human  ones  ? 
Who  would  not  emulate  them  in  the  creation  of 
children  such  as  theirs,  which  have  preserved  their 
memory  and  given  them  everlasting  glory?  Or 
who  would  not  have  such  children  as  Lycurgus 
left  behind  him  to  be  the  saviours  not  only  of 


26  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

Lacedaemon,    but    of    Hellas,    as    one    may    say? 
There  is  Solon,  too,  who  is  the  revered  father  of 
Athenian  laws,  and  many  others  there  are  in  many 
other  places  both  among  Hellenes  and  barbarians. 
All   of   them   have    given   the    world   many   noble 
works,  and  have  been  the  parents  of  virtue  of  every 
kind,  and  many  temples  have  been  raised  in  their 
honor   for  the   sake  of  their  children,  which  are 
never  raised  in  honor  of  any  one  for  the  sake  of 
his   mortal   children.     These   are  the   lesser  mys- 
teries of  love  into  which  even  you,  Socrates,  may 
enter ;  to  the  greater  and  more  hidden  ones  which 
are  the  crown  of  these,  and  to  which  if  you  pursue 
them  in  a  right  spirit  they  will  lead,  I  know  not 
whether  you  will  be  able  to  attain.     But  I  will  do 
my  utmost  to  inform  you,  and  do  you  follow  if  you 
can.     For  he  who  would  proceed  aright  in  this 
matter   should  begin   in  youth  to  visit  beautiful 
forms ;  and  first,  if  he  would  be  guided  by  his  in- 
structor aright  to  love  one  form  only ;  out  of  that 
he  should  create  fair  thoughts ;  and  soon  he  will 
of  himself  perceive  that  the  beauty  of  one  form  is 
akin  to  the  beauty  of  another ;  and  then  if  beauty 
of  form  in  general  is  his  pursuit  how  foolish  would 
he  be  not  to  recognize  that  the  beauty  in  every 
form  is  one  and  the  same !     And  when  he  perceives 
this  he  will  begin  a  love  of  all  beautiful  forms,  and 
drawing  toward  and  contemplating  the  vast  sea  of 
beauty,    he    will    create    many    fair    and    noble 
thoughts  and  notions  in  boundless  love  of  wisdom ; 
until  on  that  shore  he  grows  and  waxes  strong, 


FRIENDSHIP  27 

and  at  last  the  vision  is  revealed  to  him  of  a  single 
science,  which  is  the  science  of  beauty  everywhere. 
He  who  has  been  instructed  thus  far  in  the  things 
of  love,  and  who  has  learned  to  see  the  beautiful 
in  due  order  and  succession,  when  he  comes  toward 
the  end  will  suddenly  perceive  a  nature  of  won- 
drous beauty,  a  nature  which  in  the  first  place  is 
everlasting,  not  growing  and  decaying  or  waxing 
and  waning. — And  the  true  order  of  going  or  be- 
ing led  by  another  to  the  things  of  love  is  to  use 
the  beauties  of  earth  as  steps  along  which  he 
mounts  upward  for  the  sake  of  that  other  beauty, 
— until  he  arrives  at  the  notion  of  absolute  beauty, 
and  at  last  knows  what  the  essence  of  beauty  is, 
and  attains  that  life  above  all  others  which  man 
should  live  in  the  contemplation  of  Beauty  Ab- 
solute. For  what  if  man  had  eyes  to  see  the  true 
beauty,  the  divine  beauty,  I  mean  pure  and  clear 
and  unalloyed,  not  clogged  with  the  pollution  of 
mortality? — Do  you  not  see  that  in  that  com- 
munion only,  beholding  beauty  with  the  eye  of  the 
mind,  he  will  be  enabled  to  bring  forth  not  images 
of  beauty,  but  realities,  for  he  has  hold  not  of  an 
image  but  of  a  reality,  and  bringing  forth  and 
nourishing  true  virtue  to  become  the  friend  of 
God,  and  immortal,  if  mortal  man  may !" 


Ill 

THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS 

Among  the  Essays  of  Elia  there  is  one  entitled 
"The  Old  and  The  New  Schoolmaster,"  in  which 
the  old  schoolmaster  is  described  as  a  "fine  old 
pedagogue  of  the  breed  long  since  extinct  of  the 
Lilys  and  Linacres,  who  believing  that  all  learn- 
ing was  contained  in  the  languages  which  they 
taught,  and  despising  every  other  accomplishment 
as  superficial  and  useless,  came  to  their  task  as  to 
a  sport.  Passing  from  infancy  to  age,  they 
dreamed  away  all  their  days  as  in  a  grammar 
school.  Revolving  in  a  perpetual  cycle  of  declen- 
sions, conjugations,  syntax  and  prosodies,  review- 
ing constantly  the  occupation  that  had  claimed 
their  studious  childhood,  rehearsing  continually 
the  part  of  the  Past,  life  must  have  slipped  from 
them  at  last  like  one  day."  With  this  joyous  and 
joy-giving  race,  he  contrasts  "the  modern  school- 
master, a  most  pathetic  being  who  is  expected  to 
know  a  little  of  everything,  because  his  pupil  is 
required  not  to  be  entirely  ignorant  of  anything. 
He  must  be  superficially,  if  I  may  say  so,  omnis- 
cient, and  all  the  things  that  he  knows,  these  or 
the  desire  of  them,  he  is  expected  to  instil  not  by 
set  lessons  which  he  may  charge  in  the  bill,  but  at 

28 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        29 

school-intervals  as  he  walks  the  streets  or  saunters 
through  the  fields  with  his  pupils.  The  least  part 
of  what  is  expected  of  him  is  to  be  done  in  school 
hours.  He  must  insinuate  knowledge  at  the 
mollia  tempora  fandi.  He  must  seize  every  oc- 
casion,— the  season  of  the  year,  the  time  of  the 
day,  a  passing  cloud,  a  rainbow,  a  wagon  of  hay, 
a  regiment  of  soldiers  going  by  to  inculcate  some- 
thing useful.  He  can  receive  no  pleasure  from  a 
casual  glimpse  of  nature,  but  must  catch  at  it  as 
an  object  of  instruction.  Nothing  comes  to  him 
not  spoiled  by  the  sophisticating  medium  of  moral 
uses.  The  Universe,  that  Great  Book,  as  it  has 
been  called,  is  to  him  indeed  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  a  book  out  of  which  he  is  doomed  to  read 
tedious  homilies  to  distasting  school-boys." 

I  fancy  that  the  gentle  Elia  took  a  somewhat 
pessimistic  view  of  the  schoolmaster  even  of  his 
day,  and  yet  doubtless  there  was  much  truth  in  the 
dark  picture  which  he  drew.  But  the  reason  why 
the  fine  old  pedagogues  were  happy,  loved  and 
honored,  and  their  successors  of  Lamb's  day  were 
unhappy,  and  shall  I  say  unloved  and  dishonored? 
is  perfectly  obvious.  The  schoolmaster  of  the 
"fine  old  breed  of  the  Lilys  and  Linacres"  was 
happy  because  he  was  teaching  one  subject,  clas- 
sics, the  only  subject  deemed  worth  knowing,  and 
which  he  knew  or  was  reverently  striving  to  know, 
as  well  as  it  could  be  known  in  his  generation. 
This  subject  filled  him  with  happiness,  so  that  he 
taught  not  out  of  a  sense  of  duty  (conscientious 


30  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

teaching  is  never  the  highest  teaching),  but  out  of 
joy  and  with  an  eagerness  that  others  should 
know  the  joy  that  filled  his  soul;  should  drink  of 
the  fountain  of  Truth,  Wisdom  and  Beauty  that 
had  been  opened  to  him.  His  attitude  toward  his 
pupils  was  "What  the  Father  hath  given  me,  that 
give  I  unto  you."  So  he  taught  them  reverence 
and  enthusiasm,  and  no  wonder  that  the  reverence 
and  enthusiasm  which  the  pupil  felt  for  the  thing 
taught  was  in  some  measure  extended  to  him  who 
taught,  that  there  was  a  wonderful  friendship  be- 
tween master  and  pupils.  For  friendship  is  fel- 
lowship, and  fellowship  in  those  days  in  which 
Montaigne's  father  "received  all  who  knew  Greek 
as  though  they  were  angels  of  God,"  was  largely 
founded  on  enthusiasm  for  the  classics,  the  one 
subject  which  all  educated  men  had  in  common, 
the  one  subject  which  until  very  recently  all  edu- 
cated men  in  England  still  had  in  common,  thus 
making  possible  a  comradeship  among  English 
scholars  not  found  among  the  scholars  of  other 
countries. 

But  Charles  Lamb  lived  in  the  days  of  our 
grandfathers ;  his  lot  fell  upon  those  evil  times 
when  the  number  of  subjects  and  what  was  known 
of  them  had  increased,  and  yet  had  not  increased 
beyond  the  point  where  the  schoolmaster  could, 
by  making  a  drudge  of  himself,  know  a  little  of 
each,  hence  he  was  required  to  do  so,  to  be  "super- 
ficially omniscient."  The  schoolmaster  of  the 
"breed  of  the  Lilys  and  Linacres"  knew  nearly  all 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        31 

that  there  was  to  know,  but  then  there  was  not 
much,  so  he  had  time  to  know  it  leisurely  and  well, 
to  brood  over  it,  and  to  love  it.  The  schoolmaster 
of  Lamb's  day  still  tried  to  know  everything,  that 
was  still  the  ideal,  but  everything  by  that  time 
meant  so  many  things,  that,  trying  to  know  all, 
it  was  impossible  for  him  to  know  anything  more 
than  superficially ;  thus  he  did  not  brood  over  the 
beauty  of  Truth  or  of  any  portion  of  it,  he  did 
not  live  with  it,  he  did  not  love  it.  Life  was  just 
a  nervous  strain,  a  wild  chase  after  knowledge 
which  because  of  its  vastness  his  mind  could 
not  comprehend,  and  his  spirit  could  still  less 
apprehend,  and  in  which  he  took  no  inter- 
est save  to  pass  it  on  to  some  one  else,  who,  to  use 
Charles  Lamb's  quaint  expression,  "distasted"  it 
even  more  than  he  did.  Of  course  the  knowledge 
which  he  thus  imparted  to  his  pupils  could  not  be 
a  bond  of  fellowship  between  them,  since  neither 
pupil  nor  teacher  really  loved  it. 

Lamb's  new  schoolmaster  was  not  unique,  he 
was  just  like  any  one  else  who  has  more  to  do  than 
mind  or  body  can  stand,  incapable  of  consciously 
and  emotionally  loving  anything,  whether  Truth, 
Beauty,  Work,  Man  or  God.  A  friend  once  told 
me  that  she  had  always  thought  the  love  between 
her  parents  the  most  beautiful  thing  that  she  had 
ever  known,  but  when  after  her  father's  death  she 
spoke  of  it  in  that  way  to  her  mother  the  reply 
was,  "Yes,  so  long  as  you  can  remember.  But  it 
was  not  always  so.     When  we  were  first  married 


32  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

we  were  very  poor,  and  had  to  work  very  hard,  so 
we  were  too  tired  to  be  conscious  even  of  loving 
each  other,  and  of  course  we  didn't  love  our  work ; 
there  was  too  much  of  it."  Yes,  there  was  too 
much  of  it.  and  it  was  too  hurried  for  them  to  do 
it  either  well  or  lovingly ;  they  could  not  feel  the 
artist's  joy  in  perfect  workmanship;  their  work 
was  only  a  task  to  get  through  with.  That 
was  the  case  of  Charles  Lamb's  modern  school- 
master. 

It  is  many  years  since  Elia  wrote,  and  times 
have  changed.  His  "new  schoolmaster"  has  now 
become  the  "old  schoolmaster,"  and  though  his 
breed  is  not  entirely  extinct,  he  is  passing  away 
to  give  place  to  him  whom  we  now  call  the  "new 
schoolmaster."  Of  this  new  schoolmaster  I  can- 
not say  much  from  personal  experience,  but  the 
new  schoolmistress  I  know  full  well.  So  I  will 
write  of  her,  and  much  of  what  is  true  of  her  is 
doubtless  true  also  of  the  new  schoolmaster.  Our 
new  schoolmistress  differs  from  Elia's  new  school- 
master, because  we  have  in  some  sense  gone  back 
to  the  breed  of  Lily  and  Linacre,  and  I  trust  that 
as  time  goes  on  we  may  do  so  still  more.  For  now 
the  field  of  knowledge  is  so  vast  that  there  is  no 
hope  of  becoming  even  "superficially  omniscient," 
so  we  no  longer  try  to  be  so.  We  have  become 
specialists  as  Lily  and  Linacre  were,  the  difference 
between  us  and  them  is  that  we  know  that  all 
knowledge  is  not  contained  in  the  subjects  which 
we  teach,  and  therefore  it  is  impossible  for  us  to 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        33 

do  as  they  did,  and  "despise  every  other  accom- 
plishment as  superficial  and  useless."  We  have 
even  passed  the  times  in  which  men  tried  (I  don't 
suppose  women  ever  did  try)  to  know  "something 
about  everything  and  everything  about  some- 
thing." We  are  content  now  if  in  times  of  recrea- 
tion we  can  learn  a  little  about  several  things, 
while  in  working  times  we  learn  a  little  more  about 
the  one  thing  that  we  have  chosen  to  teach,  be- 
cause we  love  it  best.  With  this  limited  aim  each 
may  work  at  her  own  subject,  with  the  same  leis- 
ure, the  same  unhasting  diligence,  the  same  fruit- 
ful dreaminess  with  which  Lily  and  Linacre  worked 
at  theirs,  and  each  may  love  her  subject  as  the 
great  teachers  of  old  loved  their  Homer  and  Vir- 
gil, and  may  have  the  same  joy  in  imparting  it 
that  they  had. 

For  notwithstanding  Plato  to  the  contrary,  I 
believe  that  no  one  can  be  a  good  teacher  who  does 
not  love  to  teach,  who  is  not  so  filled  with  the  sub- 
ject that  he  must  impart  it  to  others,  who  does  not 
have  something  of  the  "I  must  tell  you,  or  I'll 
burst"  feeling.  I  suppose  that  what  Plato  means 
when  he  says  that  no  one  can  be  a  good  teacher 
who  wishes  to  teach  is  that  no  one  can  be  a  good 
teacher  who  considers  himself  other  men's  superior, 
and  therefore  capable  of  teaching  them.  But 
does  anything  tend  more  toward  humility  than  en- 
thusiasm for  that  which  is  great?  "I  must  tell 
you,  or  I'll  burst,"  not  that  you  may  admire  me  for 
knowing  or  understanding,  but  that  you  may  come 


34  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

to  know  and  understand,  and  therefore  enjoy  as  I 
enjoy, — something  of  the  feeling  which  Andrew 
had  "when  he  found  his  brother  Simon,  and  said  to 
him,  "We  have  found  Him  of  whom  Moses  in  the 
law  and  the  prophets  did  write,"  the  feeling  which 
John  the  Baptist  had  when  he  proclaimed,  "the 
Lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the 
world,"  knowing  all  the  time,  and  rejoicing  in  the 
knowledge,  that  "He  must  increase,  while  I  must 
decrease."  For  finding  or  understanding  even  a 
little  portion  of  the  truth  rouses  a  feeling  in  some 
measure  akin  to  that  which  one  has  in  finding  or 
understanding  a  little  of  Him  who  is  the  Whole 
Truth. 

Is  it  too  much  then  to  say  that  no  one  should 
teach  a  subject  who  does  not  love  it,  who  does  not 
love  it  enough  to  wish  to  impart  it  to  others,  and 
to  be  in  some  way  going  on  with  it  herself?  All 
good  schools  make  such  a  requirement  of  music 
and  art  teachers.  It  is  necessary  that  the  music 
teacher  should  not  only  have  a  certain  training  in 
music,  but  also  that  she  should  love  music,  that 
she  should  have  some  talent  for  it,  and  that  in 
addition  to  teaching  she  should  be  doing  some- 
thing with  her  own  music.  Is  it  too  much  to  ask 
that  the  teacher  of  mathematics  should  be  as  much 
of  an  artist  in  her  own  line  as  the  teacher  of  music 
is  in  hers?  that  she  should  not  only  have  the  re- 
quisite training,  but  that  she  should  love  mathe- 
matics, have  some  special  talent  for  it,  and 
be  either  actually  going  on  in  the  subject,  or  be 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        35 

constantly  working  out  new  ways  of  presenting 
that  which  she  already  knows,  and  that  she  should 
somehow  make  some  vital  connection  between 
mathematics  and  life,  which  makes  her  eager  to 
teach  mathematics  to  her  pupils? 

And  frequently  the  truly  great  teacher  with  a 
real  mastery  of  her  subject  will  take  the  most 
pleasure  in  teaching  elementary  work,  because  she 
will  see  the  whole  wrapped  up  in  the  beginning,  so 
that  she  will  never  think  that  it  is  a  small  thing  to 
teach  the  beginning.  It  is  too  often  assumed 
that  the  elements  of  a  subject  can  be  taught  by 
any  young  girl  who  happens  to  know  them ;  some- 
times she  is  not  even  required  to  know  them  par- 
ticularly well,  and  of  course  she  knows  nothing  be- 
yond them.  Nlever  was  there  a  more  fatal  mis- 
take. The  ideal  teacher  of  elementary  work  is 
the  mature  woman  who  is,  so  far  as  is  possible, 
mistress  of  the  subject.  Not  that  I  should  say 
to  the  young  teacher,  Be  content  with  elementary 
work,  since  it  is  as  great,  perhaps  a  greater  thing 
than  advanced  work.  For  to  the  young  woman  it 
is  not  so  great  a  thing  as  advanced  work,  for  the 
reason  that  she  herself  is  as  yet  too  limited  to 
make  it  so.  So  she  may  not,  while  she  is  young, 
be  happy  in  it,  because  if  she  is  a  growing  person 
she  will  not  be  content  to  do  it  in  a  little  way,  and 
she  has  not  as  yet  the  outlook  which  would  enable 
her  to  do  it  in  a  big  way.  Therefore  I  should  ad- 
vise her  at  first  to  seek  as  advanced  work  as  she 
can   get.     Through  teaching  advanced  work  she 


36  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

will  come  to  see  what  a  big  thing  elementary  work 
is,  then  she  will  herself  be  big  enough  to  come  back 
to  the  elementary  work,  and  to  teach  it  with  enthu- 
siasm. When  we  have  once  done  what  the  world 
considers  the  greater  thing  we  are  the  more  will- 
ing to  do  what  the  world  considers  the  smaller 
thing,  for  we  see  that  there  is  no  big  or  little,  it  all 
lies  in  the  doing  of  it.  In  the  doing,  the  small 
thing  can  be  made  great,  the  great  thing  can  be 
made  small. 

We  have  seen  that  the  students  of  the  days  of 
Lily  and  Linacre  did  not  clearly  distinguish  be- 
tween love  and  reverence  for  Homer  and  Virgil, 
and  love  and  reverence  for  him  through  whom  they 
became  acquainted  with  Homer  and  Virgil.  And 
not  only  were  teacher  and  taught  bound  by  their 
common  enthusiasm,  but  that  Renascence  period, 
as  we  all  know,  was  characterized  by  glowing, 
passionate  friendships  between  mature  scholars, 
many  of  whom  were  teachers.  Those  were  days 
in  which  men  loved  each  other  as  in  the  days  of 
David  and  Jonathan  and  the  old  Greeks,  as  per- 
haps men  never  had  loved  each  other  since  the 
little  band  of  those  who  had  been  with  Jesus, 
united  by  a  common  love  for  their  ascended  Lord, 
ceased  to  squabble  as  to  who  should  be  the  great- 
est, and  lovingly  vied  with  each  other  in  witness- 
ing to  the  power  of  His  resurrection. 

But  Charles  Lamb  represents  his  new  school- 
master as  not  only  rinding  no  emotional  satisfac- 
tion in  his  work,  but  as  denied  both  the  affection 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS       37 

of  his  pupils,  and  the  friendship  of  his  contempo- 
raries. He  quotes  from  a  letter  for  which  he  says 
he  is  "indebted  to  his  cousin  Bridget,"  in  which 
"a  sensible  man  of  his  profession"  writes,  "Persons 
in  my  situation  are  more  to  be  pitied  than  can  be 
well  imagined.  We  are  surrounded  by  young  and 
consequently  ardently  affectionate  hearts,  but  we 
can  never  hope  to  share  an  atom  of  their  affec- 
tions. The  relation  of  master  and  scholar  for- 
bids this.  'How  pleasing  this  must  be  to  you,  how 
I  envy  your  feelings,'  my  friends  will  sometimes  say 
to  me,  when  they  see  young  men  whom  I  have  edu- 
cated return  after  some  years'  absence  from 
school,  their  eyes  shining  with  pleasure  while  they 
shake  hands  with  their  old  master,  bringing  a 
present  of  game  to  me,  or  a  toy  to  my  wife,  and 
thanking  me  in  the  warmest  manner  for  my  care 
of  their  education.  A  holiday  is  begged  for  the 
boys ;  the  house  is  a  scene  of  happiness.  I  only 
am  sad  at  heart.  This  fine-spirited  and  warm- 
hearted youth,  who  fancies  that  he  repays  his 
master  with  gratitude  for  his  care  of  his  boyish 
years,  this  young  man  in  the  eight  long  years  I 
watched  over  him  with  a  parent's  anxiety  never 
could  repay  me  with  one  look  of  genuine  feeling. 
He  was  proud  when  I  praised,  he  was  submissive 
when  I  reproved;  but  he  did  never  love  me,  and 
what  he  now  mistakes  for  gratitude  and  kindness 
for  me  is  but  the  pleasant  sensation  which  all  per- 
sons feel  at  revisiting  the  scene  of  their  boyish 
hopes  and  fears,  and  the  seeing  on  equal  terms 


38  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

the  man  they  were  accustomed  to  look  up  to  with 
reverence." 

And  what  this  poor  schoolmaster  missed  from 
his  pupils  was  not  made  up  to  him  by  his  contem- 
poraries. "Why,"  asks  Elia,  "are  we  never  quite 
at  ease  in  the  presence  of  a  schoolmaster?  Be- 
cause we  are  conscious  that  he  is  not  quite  at  ease 
in  ours.  He  is  awkward  and  out  of  place  in  the 
society  of  his  equals.  He  comes  like  Gulliver  from 
among  his  little  people,  and  he  cannot  fit  the  stat- 
ure of  his  understanding  to  yours.  He  cannot 
meet  you  on  the  square.  He  is  so  used  to  teach- 
ing that  he  wants  to  be  teaching  you.  He  is  for- 
lorn among  his  co-evals ;  his  juniors  cannot  be 
his  friends." 

I  think  that  we  have  analyzed  the  situation  of 
Lamb's  "new  schoolmaster"  sufficiently  to  see  why 
this,  though  probably  an  exaggerated  picture,  has 
some  truth  in  it.  For  the  knowledge  which 
neither  of  them  loved  could  not  create  affection 
between  master  and  pupil,  and  the  master  was 
too  hard  worked,  too  much  of  a  drudge  to  make 
of  himself  a  cultivated  man  who  could  meet  culti- 
vated contemporaries  on  equal  terms.  But  is  the 
schoolmistress  of  to-day  condemned  to  a  life  of 
such  isolation?  First,  does  she  fail  to  secure  the 
affection  of  her  pupils?  That  depends  upon  what 
is  meant  by  affection.  Strictly  speaking,  I  think 
that  there  can  hardly  be  friendship  between 
teacher  and  pupil,  for  friendship  to  my  mind 
means  a  mutual  entering  into  each  other's  lives. 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS       39 

It  cannot  therefore  be  formed  between  two  persons 
who  differ  greatly  in  maturity ;  it  can  no  more  be 
formed  when  these  persons  are  mother  and  daugh- 
ter than  when  they  are  teacher  and  pupil.  For 
however  much  love  there  may  be  between  them, 
the  younger  cannot  enter  fully  into  the  elder's 
life.  And  it  is  seldom  that  the  elder  can  enter 
fully  into  the  younger's  life,  or  at  least  succeed 
in  convincing  her  that  she  can.  We  have  a  way 
of  forgetting  our  own  youth ;  even  when  we  do  not 
forget  it  intellectually,  we  often  forget  it  sympa- 
thetically. Sometimes  what  we  are  now  pleased 
to  call  the  foolishness  of  young  persons,  instead 
of  calling  forth  our  sympathy  makes  us  blush 
with  shame  and  mortification,  remembering  some 
familiar  passage  in  our  own  youth,  and  instead 
of  attracting  us  repels  us,  for  we  do  not  like  to 
be  made  ashamed  even  of  our  past  selves.  And 
if  the  likeness  to  our  own  youth  occasionally  keeps 
us  apart,  even  more  does  the  unlikeness.  For  the 
girl  of  to-day  is  different  from  the  girl  of  our  day, 
and  unless  we  are  very  quick  at  adjusting  our- 
selves to  the  difference,  that  is  another  reason  for 
not  fully  understanding  her. 

Yet  though  we  teachers  may  often  misunder- 
stand, I  maintain  that  we  who  live  constantly  sur- 
rounded by  young  girls,  and  who  make  it  our  busi- 
ness to  try  to  understand  them,  have  a  better 
chance  of  doing  so  than  other  women  of  our  age, 
even  though  they  be  mothers.  And  as  there  is 
almost  always  real  affection  between  mother  and 


40  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

daughter,  though  not  equal  friendship,  so  there  is 
frequently  affection  between  teacher  and  pupil 
that  is  honest,  real  and  personal.  Occasionally 
this  affection  ripens  into  friendship,  just  as  the 
affection  between  mother  and  daughter  should  al- 
ways ripen  into  friendship.  For  a  time  comes 
when  the  pupil,  like  the  daughter,  attains  her  ma- 
turity, and  perhaps  can  put  more  into  her  former 
teacher's  life  than  the  teacher  can  put  into  her 
life. 

But  we  teachers  are  finite,  our  time  and  strength 
is  limited,  we  have  many  pupils  and  we  cannot  enter 
into  personal  relations  with  any  large  proportion 
of  them.  Perhaps  it  is  not  desirable  that  we 
should  try  to  do  so,  for  we  must  save  ourselves 
for  the  class-room,  and  it  may  be  better  that  our 
pupils  should  see  us  only  when  we  can  be  at  our 
best.  Yet  there  is  often  a  great  deal  of  intellec- 
tual and  spiritual  sympathy,  such  as  almost 
amounts  to  affection,  between  pupils  and  teachers 
who  in  personal  ways  scarcely  know  each  other. 
There  are  moments  in  the  class-room  when  "eye 
lights  eye  in  good  fellowship,  and  hearts,"  teach- 
er's and  pupils'  hearts,  "expand  and  become  one 
in  the  sense  of  this  world's  life."  It  is  wonderful 
too  how  a  teacher  will  sometimes  become  dependent 
upon  the  sympathy  of  a  single  pupil,  perhaps  one 
hardly  known  to  her  outside  of  the  class-room. 
I  have  had  times  when  there  was  a  lump  in  my 
throat,  when  I  have  felt  that  I  could  not  teach 
a  lesson,  because  of  the  absence  from  the  class  of 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        41 

a  pupil  with  whom  I  was  strongly  in  sympathy, 
with  whom  I  was  in  the  habit  of  laughing  or  feel- 
ing deeply;  sometimes  it  has  been  a  pupil  with 
whom  in  a  purely  social  way  I  had  scarcely  ex- 
changed a  sentence.  I  remember  that  Sonya 
Kovalevsky  writes  to  a  colleague  of  hers  in  the 
University  of  Stockholm  who  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  attending  her  lectures,  "Do  not  come  to  hear 
me  to-day,  if  you  have  a  headache.  I  will  try  to 
lecture  just  as  well  as  though  you  were  there." 
A  woman  commenting  upon  this  in  one  of  our 
American  magazines  condemned  Sonya  as  "wo- 
manish" after  all,  not  really  absorbed  in  her  sub- 
ject, dependent  upon  the  inspiration  that  came 
to  her  from  a  single  auditor,  perhaps  lecturing 
mainly  to  gain  his  admiration.  But  one  of  our 
most  prominent  American  professors  of  mathe- 
matics, a  man,  replying  to  this,  said  that  Sonya's 
weakness,  if  weakness  it  could  be  called,  was  at 
least  not  confined  to  womankind,  for  every  teacher, 
whether  man  or  woman,  knows  what  it  is  to  be 
thus  dependent  upon  the  sympathy  of  an  audience, 
frequently  too  upon  the  sympathy  of  a  single  per- 
son in  that  audience.  No,  we  do  not  crave  ad- 
miration, but  we  do  crave  sympathy.  We  wish  to 
feel  that  others  are  moved  by  that  which  moves 
us.  This  sympathy  we  generally  get  when  we 
deserve  it.  And  while  the  brightening  of  the  eyes 
and  the  occasional  clasping  of  the  hands,  which 
are  the  tokens  of  it,  do  not  always  mean  even  in- 
cipient friendship,  they  do  mean  that  teacher  and 


42  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

pupil  will  always  be  glad  to  meet,  to  hear  of  each 
other,  and  that  they  will  always  think  of  each 
other  affectionately.  Of  course  we  know  that  this 
sympathy  is  often  purely  sentimental,  a  combina- 
tion of  the  intellectual  and  the  emotional  that  has 
no  real  influence  upon  the  life.  The  teacher  has 
interested  the  pupil,  but  has  not  influenced  her. 
But  is  not  this  often  also  true  of  the  sympathy  be- 
tween the  preacher  and  his  audience?  And  did 
not  the  Divine  Teacher  tell  us  that  much  of  the 
seed  would,  must  perhaps,  fall  upon  stony  ground, 
where  there  was  not  much  deepness  of  earth,  and 
that  the  seed  that  fell  so  would  spring  up  quickly, 
but  would  also  soon  wither  away?  So  we  must 
not  be  discouraged  because  of  this,  but  rather  be 
thankful  that  occasionally  we  do  have  evidence 
that  some  of  the  seed  does  fall  upon  good  ground, 
and  brings  forth  abundantly. 

Elia's  poor  schoolmaster  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
even  less  at  home  with  his  contemporaries  than 
he  was  with  his  pupils.  This  seems  to  have  been 
not  only  because  he  was  too  busy  to  cultivate  in- 
terests which  would  bring  him  in  touch  with  them, 
but  also  because  he  never  saw  them  long  enough 
to  get  used  to  them.  For  alas !  poor  man !  his 
work  did  not  cease  when  the  term  ended.  "Vaca- 
tions themselves  are  none  to  him,  he  is  only  rather 
worse  off  than  before;  for  commonly  he  has  some 
intrusive  upper  boy  fastened  upon  him  at  such 
times,  some  cadet  of  a  great  family,  some  neg- 
lected lump  of  nobility  or  gentry  that  he  must 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        43 

drag  after  him  to  the  play,  to  the  panorama,  to 
Mr.  Bentley's  Orrery,  to  the  Pantopticon,  or  into 
the  country  to  a  friend's  house,  or  to  his  favorite 
watering  place.  Wherever  he  goes  this  uneasy 
shadow  attends  him.  A  boy  is  at  his  board,  and 
in  his  path,  and  in  all  his  movements.  He  is  boy- 
rid,  sick  of  perpetual  boy." 

That  is  not  the  way  in  which  we  new  school- 
mistresses spend  our  vacations.  We  say  a  real 
good-bye  to  our  pupils  when  school  closes,  in  order 
that  when  we  come  back  to  them  we  may  be  more 
to  them.  Our  vacations  are  given  to  rest,  to 
pleasure,  to  family  life,  sometimes  to  intellectual 
work  of  our  own.  It  is  wonderful  too  how  quickly 
the  one  life  drops  out  to  give  place  to  the  other. 
Except  for  the  memories,  when  we  are  away  from 
school  it  is  as  though  we  were  never  there;  when 
we  are  in  school  it  is  as  though  we  were  never 
away,  so  quickly  do  wei  fit  into  either  life,  and  each 
supports  and  strengthens  the  other.  It  is  the  life 
away  from  school  that  enriches  the  school  life  and 
makes  it  more  beautiful,  but  just  as  truly  does  the 
school  life  enrich  the  other  life  and  make  it  more 
beautiful.  There  are  the  wonderful  trips  to 
Europe  which  teachers  take  more  frequently  than 
do  other  people  who  are  not  rich,  the  rest  of  the 
ocean  steamers,  the  pleasant  chance  acquaintances 
with  the  varied  interests  which  they  impart  to  us, 
the  sight-seeing,  the  musing  and  dreaming,  the 
studying  sometimes  in  foreign  lands.  And  even 
when  we  do  not  go  abroad  we  still  utilize  our  long 


44  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

vacations  in  storing  up  summer  driftwood  for  the 
winter  fire.  We  live  simple  lives  with  father  and 
mother,  brothers  and  sisters,  such  as  keep  us  in 
touch  with  the  ordinary  life  of  womankind.  We 
think,  we  read,  we  receive  and  write  letters,  thus 
keeping  up  old  acquaintances  while  we  make  new 
ones.  Then  in  the  winter  vacations  there  are  the 
operas  and  the  theatres,  the  picture  galleries  and 
the  blessed  Christmas  time  when,  through  letters, 
many  generations  of  friends  and  pupils  gather 
around  us,  and  all  the  past  chapters  of  life  are  re- 
opened. 

For  we  new  schoolmistresses  do  make  friends 
among  our  contemporaries ;  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
no  other  class  of  women  makes  so  many.  The 
married  woman  has  her  husband  and  her  children ; 
she  does  not  need,  and  the  circumstances  of  her 
life  do  not  generally  permit  her  to  have  many 
close  friends,  and  the  unmarried  woman  who  lives 
at  home  has  commonly  a  much  more  limited  num- 
ber from  among  whom  to  choose.  Our  difficulty 
is  that  we  have  too  many,  so  many  new  friends 
constantly  coming  into  our  lives,  that  the  days 
and  years  are  not  long  enough  for  us  to  give  time 
to  all  the  people  that  are  dear  to  us.  As  to 
whether  we  try  to  instruct  our  contemporaries, 
well,  that  is  for  our  contemporaries  to  say. 
Probably  most  people  do  know  that  we  are  teach- 
ers without  being  told,  but  what  of  that?  Do  not 
people  generally  recognize  a  clergyman,  a  doctor, 
a  lawyer,  a  business  man,  a  mother  without  being 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        45 

told?  And  is  it  such  a  disgrace  to  be  a  teacher 
that  we  should  dislike  being  recognized  as  such? 
But  while  we  have  friends  who  are  not  teachers, 
our  dearest  friends  are  generally  among  our  col- 
leagues, and  that  begins  another  chapter. 

To  complete  the  isolation  of  Elia's  school- 
master, his  occupation  had  caused  estrangement 
between  himself  and  his  wife,  his  gentle  Anna. 
"My  wife  too,"  he  writes,  "my  once  darling  Anna 
is  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster.  When  I  married 
her,  knowing  that  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster 
ought  to  be  a  busy,  notable  creature,  and  fearing 
that  my  gentle  Anna  would  ill  supply  the  loss  of 
my  dear  mother  just  then  dead,  I  expressed  my 
fears  that  I  was  bringing  her  into  a  way  of  life 
unsuited  to  her;  and  she  who  loved  me  tenderly 
promised  for  my  sake  to  exert  herself  to  perform 
the  duties  of  her  new  situation.  She  promised, 
and  she  has  kept  her  word.  But  I  have  lost  my 
gentle,  helpless  Anna !  When  we  sit  down  to  en- 
joy our  hour's  repose  after  the  fatigue  of  the  day, 
I  am  compelled  to  listen  to  what  have  been  her 
useful  (and  they  are  really  useful)  employments 
through  the  day,  and  what  she  proposes  for  her 
to-morrow's  task.  Her  heart  and  her  features 
are  changed  by  the  duties  of  her  situation.  To 
the  boys  she  never  appears  other  than  the  master's 
wife,  and  she  looks  upon  me  as  the  boys'  master, 
to  whom  all  show  of  love  and  affection  would  be 
highly  improper  and  unbecoming  the  dignity  of 
her  situation  and  mine." 


46  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

Our  new  schoolmistress  has  commonly  no  wise 
and  strong  John  to  deteriorate  because  he  is  a 
teacher's  husband ;  she  often  lives  in  an  institution 
and  has  no  home,  or  at  least  no  house.  But  when 
Max  Miiller  tried  to  imagine  the  conditions  of  life 
under  which  he  could  best  do  his  work,  he  decided 
upon  those  offered  by  the  mediaeval  monastery,  and 
for  the  scene  of  his  own  life-work  he  chose  the  Eng- 
lish university,  as  being  the  nearest  approach  to 
the  mediaeval  monastery  that  modern  times  can 
furnish.  In  our  girls'  boarding-schools  and  col- 
leges, a  woman  may  live  the  monastic  life  more 
nearly  than  anywhere  else.  And  while  I  think  a 
woman  should  not  come  to  that  life  too  early,  for 
she  should  have  something  to  bring  to  it,  I  am  ab- 
normal enough  to  like  it,  for  it  furnishes  in  such 
rich  abundance  the  two  things  that  I  care  most 
about,  opportunity  for  quiet  work,  and  for  form- 
ing friendships  that  are  worth  while.  I  like  too 
the  smooth  way  in  which  everything  runs,  each 
person  with  her  own  allotted  task.  If  I  have  no 
house  of  my  own,  I  have  two  rooms  which  I  love 
perhaps  more  than  I  should  love  a  whole  house. 
For  there  would  be  no  room  in  a  house  of  my  own 
in  which  I  should  sit  so  much  as  I  now  sit  in  my 
study.  So  even  if  my  house  were  as  much  to  my 
satisfaction  as  is  my  study,  it  would  not  so  sink 
into  my  soul.  It  is  like  Aurora  Leigh's  room, 
green 

"  As  green  as  any  privet  hedge  a  bird 
Might  choose  to  build  in," 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        47 

green  paper,  green  rugs,  cool  and  refreshing. 
And  there  are  the  books  that  I  love,  my  Brown- 
ing, my  Plato,  my  Shakespeare,  my  Goethe  and  all 
my  history  books.  But  of  late  I  have  taken  more 
pleasure  in  my  pictures  than  in  my  books.  For 
I  cannot  enjoy  books  without  taking  time  to  do 
so  (there  is  of  course  a  certain  pleasure  in  having 
them  about  me,  but  that  can  be  gained  from  a 
limited  number)  ;  moreover  it  is  always  possible 
to  get  them  out  of  libraries.  So  I  now  confine 
myself  in  my  purchases  to  the  books  that  I  must 
use  as  tools,  and  to  a  few  pets.  But  my  pictures 
I  can  sit  and  enjoy  while  I  am  entertaining  guests, 
or  when  I  am  too  tired  to  do  anything;  and  even 
when  I  am  too  busy  to  really  look  at  them,  I  take 
a  sub-conscious  joy  in  their  presence.  My  almost 
life-sized  Sistine  draws  me  to  her  and  gives  me  a 
share  in  her  radiant  uplift,  my  Botticelli's  "In- 
coronata"  sympathizes  with  me  when  I  am  sad, 
only  like  some  dear  friends  who  overpower  me 
with  their  sympathy,  there  are  times  when  her  sad 
comprehension  is  more  than  I  can  bear,  and  then 
I  turn  my  eyes  from  her.  Andrea  del  Sarto's  por- 
trait of  himself  and  his  wife  reminds  me  of  the 
great  poem  that  it  inspired,  and  constantly  tells 
me  that  "A  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp." 
My  "Creation  of  Man"  gives  me  Adam  "fresh 
from  God's  hands,  as  his  wife  saw  him,"  a  body 
strong,  perfect  and  pure  such  as  God  Himself 
could  pronounce  very  good.  If  we  all  had  such 
bodies,  it  would  be  easy  to  sing 


48  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

"  How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living ! " 

And  there  are  other  pictures,  each  one  associated 
with  something  in  my  life  which  I  wish  to  remem- 
ber. There  is  a  statuette  too,  a  copy  of  Riets- 
ehel's  Goethe  and  Schiller,  to  remind  me  of  a  per- 
fect summer  that  I  passed  in  Weimar.  And  when 
I  look  out  of  my  windows,  there  is  the  beautiful 
green  world,  and  the  glorious  sunsets. 

But  after  all  a  woman's  life  does  not  consist 
in  the  things  that  she  possesseth,  even  when  these 
things  are  books  and  art  treasures.  Life  con- 
sists in  work  and  friends.  We  who  lead  this  in- 
stitutional life  have  the  work  of  course,  and  then 
what  friends  we  do  make !  I  believe  the  conditions 
for  friendship  are  better  in  institutional  life  than 
in  any  other  kind  of  life  which  the  world  has> 
known.  And  I  have  been  blessed  with  colleagues 
whom  to  know  has  been  a  liberal  education  in  many 
ways.  How  we  love  to  gather  around  a  tea-table 
together!  There  is  a  tea-room  to  which  we  go 
sometimes,  which  one  of  our  number  says  reminds 
her  of  those  old  English  taverns,  where  there  was 
very  little  perhaps  in  the  way  of  room  or  food, 
but  so  much  in  the  way  of  high  fellowship.  Do 
we  talk  shop?  Yes,  sometimes,  but  then  our  shop 
is  such  an  interesting  one,  and  how  could  we  tend 
it  well  and  make  it  a  big  shop,  unless  we  found  it 
interesting  enough  to  talk  about?  Do  we  talk 
about  the  girls?  Yes,  sometimes,  for  again  if  we 
did  not  talk  about  them,  that  would  mean  that  we 
did  not  find  them  sufficiently  interesting  to  talk 


THE  NEW  SCHOOL  MISTRESS        49 

about.  I  am  sure  I  hope  that  they  talk  about  us 
sometimes,  I  would  rather  they  would  even  say  un- 
favorable things  about  us  than  not  talk  about  us 
at  all.  The  problems  of  our  little  world  are  really 
very  much  the  same  as  the  problems  of  the  big 
world,  so  it  is  as  we  understand  our  little  problems 
that  we  are  able  to  understand  the  bigger  prob- 
lems of  the  bigger  world.  Great  men  are  only 
ordinary  men  writ  large;  we  should  study  great 
men  in  order  that  we  may  understand  the  ordinary 
men  with  whom  we  have  to  deal;  should  we  not 
study  ordinary  men  sometimes  in  order  that  we 
may  understand  great  men  ?  And  if  we  do  live  in 
a  little  world  we  will  certainly  never  make  it  a  big 
one  by  ignoring  it,  thinking  it  beneath  us  to  talk 
about  it. 

But  we  talk  about  a  great  many  other  things 
too.  There  are  aspects  of  our  work  which  cannot 
be  called  shop.  And  when  the  musicians  talk 
about  music,  the  artists  about  art,  the  teachers  of 
literature  about  literature,  the  psychologists  about 
psychology,  I  do  not  feel  as  though  I  were  shut 
up  in  an  institution,  but  rather  as  though  I  were 
out  in  the  wide,  wide  world  drawing  in  the  breath 
of  life.  I  am  sure  that  no  one  of  my  colleagues 
attempts  to  teach  me,  yet  each  one  of  these  rarely 
gifted  women  does  teach  me.  And  then  we  dis- 
cuss other  matters  which  have  no  connection  with 
our  work.  The  affairs  of  the  universe  do  not 
have  time  to  get  much  awry,  for  we  have  straight- 
ened them  out  so  often  over  our  tea-cups.     Like 


50  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

the  clergy  too  we  have  a  large  fund  of  anecdotes, 
for  both  our  acquaintances  and  our  reading  have 
been  large  and  varied.  And  are  we  happy?  I 
do  not  know  any  women  who  are  happier.  Doubt- 
less the  married  woman's  life  is  higher  and  holier 
for  the  woman  who  is  best  fitted  for  it,  but  the 
teacher's  life  is  higher  and  holier  for  the  woman 
who  is  best  fitted  for  it.  After  all  is  it  really 
so  much  better  to  bring  more  people  into  the 
world,  than  to  train  those  who  are  already  in  it, 
as  we  hope  we  are  doing,  to  be  a  little  better  and 
a  little  happier? 

The  objection  that  is  sometimes  made  to  our 
life  is  that  it  unfits  us  for  any  other.  But  does  not 
any  life  tend  to  unfit  for  any  other  life?  What 
middle-aged  man  or  woman  of  any  calling  can 
make  a  violent  change  in  manner  of  living  with 
perfect  equanimity?  On  the  whole  it  seems  best 
to  lead  the  life  which  we  have  chosen,  or  which 
circumstances  have  chosen  for  us,  as  well  as  we 
can;  our  main  duty  is  to  live  that  life,  not  to  fit 
ourselves  for  another,  which  we  shall  probably 
never  be  called  upon  to  live.  And  if  our  human 
interests  are  many  and  varied,  we  at  least  stand 
as  good  a  chance  of  being  able  to  accommodate 
ourselves  to  any  changes  that  may  come  to  us  as 
do  our  brothers  and  sisters  in  other  walks  of  life. 


IV 

THE  ARTIST 

This  morning  I  attended  a  Congregational 
church  in  Cambridge,  and  was  much  struck  by  a 
petition  in  the  long  prayer,  wherein  the  clergy- 
man prayed  for  "all  musicians  and  artists,  that 
they  may  seek  to  use  their  influence  aright." 
These  words  set  me  to  thinking  my  own  thoughts 
to  such  an  extent  that  I  am  afraid  I  did  not  hear 
the  rest  of  the  prayer,  nor  any  of  the  sermon. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  ever  heard  such  a  petition  in 
church  before,  but  it  seemed  to  me  right  that  musi- 
cians and  artists  of  all  kinds  should  be  prayed  for, 
and  I  wondered  why  clergymen  did  not  pray  for 
them  oftener.  We  pray  for  all  ministers  and 
teachers,  why  not  for  the  interpreters  of  truth,  the 
creators  of  beauty?  For  beauty  stirs  in  us  a 
chord  of  wider  and  deeper  vibration  than  does  any 
purely  intellectual  quality,  a  real  longing  for  the 
Infinite,  so  our  artists  should  be  in  a  peculiar 
sense  servants  of  the  Most  High  God,  and  there- 
fore especially  to  be  prayed  for.  Ruskin's  words 
came  to  me,  "From  day  to  day  and  strength  to 
strength,  build  up  indeed  by  art,  by  thought  and 
by  just  will  an  Ecclesia  of  which  it  shall  not  be 
said,  'See  what  manner  of  stones  are  here,  but  see 

51 


52  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

what  manner  of  men  P  "  It  is  significant  to  me 
that  in  building  up  that  Ecclesia,  art  is  placed  be- 
fore either  thought  or  just  will.  If  art  then  is  to 
be  first  agent  in  that  structure,  how  important 
that  its  influence  should  be  good! 

And  yet  I  doubt  whether  the  artist  thinks  about 
his  influence,  or  ought  to  think  about  it.  I  am 
inclined  to  believe  that  just  so  far  as  he  does  think 
about  it,  his  art  will  be  bad,  and  his  influence,  in 
so  far  as  he  has  any  influence,  will  be  bad  also. 
For  the  world's  great  workers  may  be  divided  into 
two  classes, — Reformers  and  Artists,  and  the  dif- 
ference between  them  does  not  depend  so  much 
upon  the  form  of  work  which  they  have  chosen,  as 
upon  the  spirit  in  which  they  approach  that  work. 
Thus  the  teacher  may  be  either  a  reformer  or  an 
artist.  She  (to  my  mind  the  teacher  is  generally 
she)  who  thinks  most  about  her  pupils,  about  their 
needs,  moral,  mental  and  physical  and  seeks  prin- 
cipally to  adapt  her  teaching  to  those  needs,  I 
should  class  as  a  reformer.  She  who  thinks  most 
about  the  subject  matter  which  she  is  teaching, 
and  seeks  to  present  it  as  well  as  she  can,  almost 
regardless  of  her  pupils,  I  should  class  as  an  art- 
ist. Nor  is  the  one  necessarily  a  better  teacher 
than  the  other.  The  former  makes  her  students 
feel  that  she  is  interested  first  in  them,  in  their 
merits  and  shortcomings,  interested  in  the  subject 
largely  for  their  sakes,  for  the  effect  that  it  has 
upon  them.  The  latter  is  at  first  chiefly  interested 
in  the  subject,  but  eventually  she  becomes  inter- 


THE  ARTIST  53 

ested  in  the  pupils  for  the  subject's  sake.  Gradu- 
ally she  becomes  aware  that  what  is  dear  to  her  is 
dear  to  some  of  them,  and  instantly  there  is  a 
strong  bond  of  sympathy;  or  she  recognizes  that 
what  is  dear  to  her  is  not  dear  to  some  of  them, 
and  she  tries  to  create  a  liking,  to  arouse  an  en- 
thusiasm, not  so  much  for  their  sakes,  as  for  the 
sake  of  that  which  she  loves.  Even  then  she  does 
not  turn  reformer;  she  does  not  adapt  the  subject 
to  her  pupils,  but  she  tries  to  excel  herself  in  her 
presentation  of  it,  for  she  feels  that  if  any  one 
fails  to  share  her  enthusiasm,  it  must  be  because 
her  presentation  was  faulty.  Perhaps  she  never 
takes  so  strong  a  personal  interest  in  her  students 
as  the  reformer  teacher  does.  I  have  sometimes 
thought  that  in  her  judgment  of  them  she  is  kind- 
lier, but  not  so  kind.  Not  being  so  much  inter- 
ested in  their  individual  moral  and  intellectual  wel- 
fare, she  is  not  so  severe  in  her  judgments  of  their 
shortcomings,  but  on  the  other  hand  she  will  not 
go  so  far  out  of  her  way  to  serve  them,  for  her 
real  devotion  is  to  her  subject,  not  to  her  pupils; 
one  cannot  serve  two  masters.  In  a  sense  she 
does  love  her  students,  but  often  it  is  in  the  sense 
in  which  Sir  Henry  Irving  loved  his  audiences 
when  he  addressed  himself  to  them  as  their  loving 
friend.  Yet  she  probably  gives  more  to  them  as 
artist  than  she  could  give  as  reformer.  For  we 
must  fulfill  ourselves,  not  try  to  be  somebody  else, 
that  is  suicide.  We  are  born  reformers  or  artists, 
not  made;  it  is  the  reformer's  duty  to  see  that  he 


54  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

is  a  good  reformer,  the  artist's  duty  to  see  that  he 
is  a  good  artist. 

Men  are  reformers  then  when  their  aim  is  to 
make  the  world, — their  world,  the  men,  women  and 
children  right  around  them — better,  artists  when 
they  are  intent  on  producing  a  perfect  piece  of 
work.  It  is  the  reformer  who  tries  to  influence 
people;  that  is,  he  delivers  his  message  to  those 
about  him,  and  his  care  is  first  that  it  shall  be  a 
message  that  will  help  them,  and  second  that  he 
may  put  it  in  such  form  that  they  will  hear  it. 
But  the  artist  is  alone  with  his  God ;  in  the  secret 
place  of  the  Most  High  he  has  seen  a  vision,  and 
he  strives  to  reproduce  that  vision  perfectly,  as 
he  has  seen  it,  "according  to  the  pattern  that  was 
shown  unto  him  in  the  mount,"  quite  irrespective 
of  men's  attitude  toward  it. 

"  And  only  the  Master  shall  praise  us,  and  only  the  Master 

shall  blame, 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  money,  and  no  one  shall  work 

for  fame; 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  the  working,   and  each  in  his 

separate  star 
Shall  draw  the  thing  as  he  sees  it  for  the  God  of  things 

as  they  are." 

I  think  of  these  two  classes  of  workers  in  connec- 
tion with  Raphael's  great  picture  "The  Trans- 
figuration." The  artist  is  in  my  mind  on  the 
mount  where  Christ  is  being  transfigured;  the  re- 
former is  below  in  the  valley  among  those  pos- 
sessed with  unclean  spirits,  and  unlike  the  apostles 


THE  ARTIST  55 

who  because  of  their  unbelief  could  not  cast  them 
out,  he  with  strong  faith  is  constantly  casting 
them  out.  Nor  is  the  one  greater  than  the  other. 
To  concentrate  on  perfection  is  in  some  sense 
higher,  to  deal  with  the  numerous  and  immediate 
problems  of  life  is  in  some  sense  broader,  but  both 
are  needed,  and  each  must  follow  his  star.  Of 
the  reformer  it  may  be  said,  "His  servant  doth 
continually  serve  Him,"  but  the  mission  of  the 
artist  is  not  so  much  to  serve  Him  directly,  as  to 
"see  His  face."  Strong  to  reproduce  the  truth 
which  has  been  revealed  to  him,  to  create  his  little 
portion  of  beauty,  he  comes  more  and  more  to 
understand  Him  who  is  the  source  of  all  truth,  the 
fountain  of  all  beauty,  whom  he  may  or  may  not 
call  God.  If  his  vision  is  a  true  one,  and  he  re- 
produces it  correctly,  men  perhaps  of  his  own  gen- 
eration, perhaps  of  a  later  generation,  will  gaze 
upon  it  and  be  influenced  by  it ;  but  he  does  not 
seek  to  influence,  he  seeks  only  to  present  per- 
fectly that  which  he  has  seen,  heard  and  felt  of  the 
Word  of  Life. 

"  And  if  some  worthy  spirit  be  pleased  too, 

It  shall  some  comfort  breed,  but  not  more  will. 

But  what  if  none?     It  cannot  yet  undo 
The  love  I  bear  unto  this  holy  skill; 

This  is  the  thing  that  I  was  born  to  do, 
This  is  my  scene,  this  part  must  I  fulfill." 

For  just  as  soon  as  the  artist  fixes  his  eye 
upon  his  audience,  that  is  just  as  soon  as  he  begins 
to  think  about  his  influence,  he  deteriorates  as  an 


56  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

artist.  For  then  he  must  present  not  the  ideally 
best  thing,  but  the  best  thing  that  his  audience  is 
able  to  receive ;  that  is  he  must  adapt  his  message 
to  them,  must  make  compromises,  must  in  fact 
cease  to  be  an  artist,  since  the  essence  of  art  is  the 
search  after  perfection.  The  reformer  is  con- 
stantly making  compromises  in  order  that  he  may 
influence  people,  and  within  certain  limits  it  is 
right  that  he  should.  For  he  speaks  to  the  men 
of  his  own  generation ;  he  must  influence  them  or 
count  for  nothing,  so  it  is  well  that  he  should  real- 
ize that  "half  a  loaf  is  better  than  none."  His 
work  may  be  as  enduring  as  that  of  the  artist,  but 
he  is  held  in  remembrance  not  because  of  the  pre- 
cepts that  he  taught,  but  because  of  the  changed 
lives  of  those  who  heard  him.  Through  him  they 
rose  a  step  higher,  and  the  gain  which  they  made 
they  passed  on  to  all  those  who  should  come  after. 
Most  of  us  do  not  read  Luther's  teachings  to-day, 
but  we  are  all  better  because  Luther  taught.  The 
great  lawgiver  of  Israel,  like  all  statesmen,  was  a 
reformer  rather  than  an  artist,  therefore  he  made 
compromises.  "For  the  hardness  of  your  hearts 
he  gave  you  this  precept,"  and  we  have  outgrown 
many  of  his  precepts.  Jesus  Christ  was  more  of 
an  artist  than  of  a  reformer.  He  spoke  for  all 
time,  presented  the  truth  exactly  as  He  saw  it, 
made  no  compromises  to  his  generation.  There- 
fore, as  is  so  often  the  case  with  artists,  in  his  own 
lifetime  his  influence  was  not  widespread,  but  we 
have    outgrown    nothing    that    He    taught;    all 


THE  ARTIST  57 

through  the  ages  the  Comforter  has  been  bringing 
to  remembrance  such  portions  of  His  teaching  as 
the  particular  age  has  most  needed.  So  perhaps 
it  is  best  to  pray  not  that  the  artist  may  seek  to 
use  his  influence  aright,  but  that  he  may  seek  to 
have  a  true  vision,  and  be  able  to  present  clearly 
that  which  he  has  seen. 

For  the  truth  of  the  vision,  or  at  least  its  con- 
tinuance and  deepening  truth,  and  the  ability  to 
reproduce  it,  does  depend  upon  the  earnestness 
with  which  the  artist  seeks  it.  It  is  true  that  art- 
ists are  born,  not  made,  that  the  vision  is  a  free 
gift.  Therefore  the  true  artist  will  not  think  of 
himself  as  having  accomplished  anything,  but 
rather  of  the  greatness  of  the  glory  that  has  been 
revealed  to  him;  he  can  reverence  his  art  without 
egotism,  for  his  attitude  is  that  of  the  priest  ad- 
ministering the  sacrament;  he  is  but  the  medium 
through  which  spiritual  power  manifests  itself,  the 
greatness  is  not  in  him  but  through  him.  If  he 
does  not  believe  in  a  Power  not  himself  that  makes 
for  righteousness,  he  certainly  does  believe  in  a 
Power  not  himself  that  makes  for  Truth  and 
Beauty.  Socrates  with  his  demon,  Joan  of  Arc 
with  her  voices,  are  only  slight  exaggerations  of 
what  all  artists,  nay,  all  who  have  achieved  great 
things  have  felt.  So  the  true  artist  does  not  so 
much  throw  himself  into  his  art,  as  allow  his  art 
to  impress  itself  upon  him.  "Speak,  Lord,  for 
thy  servant  heareth,"  that  is  the  attitude.  In 
that  remarkable  story  "The  Romance  of  Leonardo 


58  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

da  Vinci,"  Merejkowski  represents  Raphael  as  say- 
ing, "When  one  thinks,  everything  goes  wrong." 
I  take  this  to  mean  that  so  long  as  the  artist  con- 
sciously thinks,  that  is  so  long  as  he  and  his 
thought  are  separated,  he  produces  nothing  that 
can  be  called  art,  for  what  is  more  antagonistic 
to  art  than  unassimilated  intellect?  It  is  when 
the  man  becomes  so  one  with  his  thought  and  so 
one  with  his  will,  that  he  seems  to  neither  think 
nor  will,  that  the  heavenly  vision  comes  to  him,  and 
later,  under  similar  circumstances,  comes  the  power 
to  express  it.  "Divest  mind  of  e'en  thought, 
and  lo !  God's  unexpressed  will  dawns  o'er  it."  But 
in  the  interval  between  the  vision  and  its  final  em- 
bodiment in  art,  there  must  be  periods  in  which 
intellect  and  will  play  their  part,  and  play  them 
very  consciously.  "It  shall  be  given  you  in  that 
hour  what  ye  shall  speak,"  what  ye  shall  write, 
what  ye  shall  sing,  what  ye  shall  paint,  yes,  but 
only  as  previous  to  that  hour,  intellect  and  will 
have  done  their  work.  Furthermore,  later  visions 
come  only  as  the  artist  has  faithfully  presented 
those  which  have  already  been  vouchsafed  to  him. 
Moreover  I  think  it  not  too  much  to  say  that 
unless  the  artist's  waking  hours  are  rich  and  pure, 
he  will  in  time  cease  to  dream  true  dreams.  For 
art  cannot  for  any  long  time  be  separated  from 
the  life  of  which  it  is  the  embodiment;  if  it  would 
live  it  must  be  penetrated  and  transfigured  by  the 
breath  of  the  artist's  soul.  Hence  the  artist  must 
not  only  work  but  live,  since  as  art  is  the  inter- 


THE  ARTIST  59 

pretation  of  life  he  only  can  be  an  artist  who  has 
life,  and  who  has  it  more  abundantly.  All  the  ex- 
periences of  life,  its  keenest  joys  and  its  bitterest 
sorrows,  give  richness,  breadth  and  depth  to  art. 
He  who  refuses  to  drink  the  cup  of  either  joy  or 
sorrow  has  thereby  put  limitations  upon  his  art ; 
neither  the  old-time  Puritan  nor  the  mere  pleasure- 
seeker  has  any  place  in  the  highest  Heaven  of 
Truth  and  Beauty.  Only  sinful  experiences 
should  be  shunned,  for  in  the  long  run  sin  must 
deaden  the  fineness  of  any  gift.  Only  the  pure  in 
heart  shall  see  God. 

I  would  not,  however,  be  understood  to  say  that 
the  artist  has  no  right  to  use  sinful  experience  as 
a  subject  for  art.  For  after  all  his  mission  is  not 
so  much  to  give  us  Beauty  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  word  as  to  give  us  Truth,  to  give  us  Life. 
So  the  greatest  artist  does  not  give  us  the  beauti- 
ful to  the  exclusion  of  the  unbeautiful,  nor  the  un- 
beautiful  to  the  exclusion  of  the  beautiful,  nor 
even  the  moral  to  the  exclusion  of  the  immoral, 
but  still  less  the  immoral  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
moral,  for  he  who  sees  the  whole  cannot  always 
be  a  poet  of  "sweetness  and  light,"  nor  can  he 
always  dwell  among  the  denizens  of  the  dark. 
He  is  interested  in  life  in  every  form  in  which 
it  appears ;  he,  the  secondary  creator,  finds  no 
life  really  repulsive,  even  as  God,  the  original 
creator,  finds  no  life  really  repulsive.  He  will 
therefore  bring  earth's  truly  great  ones  before 
us,  and  investigate  the  source  of  their  strength, 


60  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

but  he  will  also  present  to  us  the  lowest,  the 
meanest  and  vilest,  let  them  justify  themselves  - 
from  their  own  point  of  view,  say  everything 
that  can  conceivably  be  said  in  their  favor. 
When  the  artist  is  himself  pure  with  the  artist's 
passion  for  truth,  I  believe  that  he  may  safely  give 
us  any  vision  that  may  come  to  him.  And  when 
he  presents  that  which  is  really  true,  not  just  on 
the  surface  true,  I  have  sufficient  faith  in  life  and 
in  the  Lord  of  life,  to  believe  that  it  must  tend  not 
toward  immorality  and  ugliness,  but  toward  mor- 
ality and  beauty.  "So  beautiful  that  it  must  be 
true"  has  its  converse,  "so  true  that  it  must  be 
beautiful"  and  both  propositions  are  true. 

It  is  said  that  Jenny  Lind  could  not  take  the 
part  of  a  bad  character  because  she  felt  so  out  of 
sympathy  with  it.  Sir  Henry  Irving  seemed  to 
prefer  the  villain's  part,  but  will  anyone  say  that 
his  acting  was  productive  of  evil?  For  myself  I 
can  say  that  every  time  I  saw  Irving  I  came  away 
feeling  that  on  the  one  hand  my  sympathies  had 
been  enlarged,  while  on  the  other  I  had  been  made 
to  pray  more  earnestly,  "Lead  me  not  into  temp- 
tation." For  he  seemed  to  say  to  each  one  of 
us,  his  auditors,  "Thou  art  the  man,"  to  make  us 
feel  that  every  man  is  contained  in  every  other 
man,  that,  given  the  same  circumstances,  any  one 
of  us  might  have  been  the  villain  whose  soul  was 
being  laid  bare  before  us.  So  while  we  looked 
into  the  heart  of  the  sinner,  and  came  to  love  and 
to  hope  for  him  who  after   all  was   so  like  our- 


THE  ARTIST  61 

selves,  came  to  understand  what  it  is  to  "hate 
sin,  but  love  the  sinner"  (as  children  we  were 
taught  that  that  was  what  God  did,  but  we  didn't 
understand  it  then),  we  looked  into  our  own  hearts 
and  said  to  ourselves,  "Let  him  who  thinketh  he 
standeth  take  heed  lest  he  fall."  Yet  I  do  not 
believe  that  Irving  tried  to  teach  a  moral  lesson ; 
he  only  tried  to  present  truth,  to  make  us  know. 
But  perfect  knowledge  means  perfect  love, — it 
means  also  perfect  morality. 

I  think  then  we  may  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  artist's  influence  is  best  when  he  tries  not 
to  make  his  influence  good,  but  to  make  his  art 
good,  and  one  of  the  ways  to  make  his  art  good 
is  to  make  his  life  good.  Here  he  has  a  great 
struggle,  for  owing  to  the  circumstances  of  his 
life,  strong  temptations  must  generally  come  to 
him,  and  owing  to  his  own  nature  these  tempta- 
tions must  appeal  to  him  with  peculiar,  almost 
irresistible  force.  For  to  be  an  artist  at  all  it 
is  necessary  to  have  a  stronger  emotional  and  in 
some  sense  a  stronger  intellectual  nature  than 
other  men  have;  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  a 
stronger  will.  Given  an  excessive  emotional  and 
intellectual  nature  with  an  average  or  less  than 
average  will  to  control  them,  and  moral  ruin  is 
almost  inevitable.  Yet  the  danger  is  greater  to 
those  who  have  the  artist's  temperament,  and 
there  are  very  many  such,  without  the  artist's 
ability.  For  the  work  itself  is  a  safeguard ;  some 
very  emotional  people  feel  that  the  only  safe  out- 


62  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

let  for  their  emotional  nature  is  in  art,  partly  be- 
cause the  emotionalism  which  finds  an  outlet  in 
that  way  may  not  demand  other  and  more  dan- 
gerous outlets,  partly  because  the  work  takes 
time,  and  while  one  is  working  one  cannot  be  ac- 
tively sinning.  Moreover  the  artist  frequently 
realizes  that  he  cannot  sin  in  such  a  way  as  to 
incapacitate  himself  for  work,  so  for  art's  sake, 
if  not  for  morality's  sake,  he  sanctifies  himself. 
For  while  it  is  probably  true  that  it  is  impossible 
to  be  an  artist  at  all  except  as  one  has  a  nature 
peculiarly  susceptible  to  temptation,  it  is  also 
true  that  he  who  constantly  yields  to  temptation 
will  injure  or  ruin  his  art.  To  be  an  artist  then 
it  is  necessary  that  one  be  tempted,  to  continue 
an  artist  it  is  necessary  that  one  resist  tempta- 
tion. But  after  all  is  there  not  the  same  necessity 
in  order  to  be  and  to  continue  to  be  a  man? 

Then  too  the  artist's  difficulty  often  comes  from 
the  fact  that  to  him  the  boundary  between  right 
and  wrong  is  not  so  rigid  as  to  other  people. 
Seeking  to  understand  life,  he  sees  so  much  good 
beneath  the  evil,  and  so  much  evil  beneath  the 
good,  that  he  is  likely  to  lose  his  bearings.  Of 
course  the  truest  and  best  balanced  artist,  like  the 
truest  and  best  balanced  man,  only  learns  from 
this  so  far  as  his  own  life  is  concerned  to  avoid  the 
evil  in  the  good,  and  so  far  as  his  judgments  of 
others  are  concerned  to  be  more  hopeful  and  more 
charitable,  since  there  is  so  much  good  in  the  evil. 
But   to    one   who   is   not   perfectly   balanced,   the 


THE  ARTIST  63 

temptation  is  to  ask  "What  is  good?"  as  Pilate 
asked  "What  is  truth?"  perhaps  at  first  earnestly, 
even  in  agony,  but  later  scornfully.  In  a  certain 
sense  too  it  is  necessary  that  the  artist  should 
have  no  fixed  opinions,  in  order  that  his  mind  may 
be  open  to  all  new  impressions.  He  must  divest 
himself  of  all  prejudices,  and  if  he  retains  tra- 
ditions, it  must  be  because  he  is  able  to  make 
them  something  more  than  traditions.  He  must 
not  put  himself  in  the  position  of  having  to  con- 
tend for  definition,  for  once  let  a  man  adopt  a 
definition,  and  all  growth  in  that  direction  stops. 
The  rest  of  his  life  is  spent  in  contending  for 
definition,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  adoption  of 
a  complicated  religious  creed,  the  strength  which 
might  have  gone  toward  developing  a  rich  spirit- 
ual life,  goes  toward  defending  the  creed.  It  is 
the  artist's  ambition  to  die  learning.  But  in  this 
tolerance  of  definition  of  right  and  wrong,  there 
is  of  course  danger  of  coming  to  the  conclusion, 
practical  if  not  theoretical,  that  there  is  no  right 
or  wrong.  Even  when  the  changing  impressions 
to  which  the  artist  is  and  must  be  subjected  do 
not  mean  moral  ruin,  they  often  mean  life-long 
inefrectualness,  for  it  is  difficult  for  him  who  sees 
good  in  everything  to  be  able  to  determine  where 
the  greater  good  lies.  Hence  there  is  much  truth 
in  the  saying  "One  must  see  to  know,  be  blind  to 
act." 

Moreover  the  very  fact  that  the  artist's  work 
lies  in  the  ideal  world  tends  to  unfit  him  to  live 


64  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

in  the  real  world.  The  emotions  of  art  have,  it  is 
true,  the  advantage  of  harmlessness  over  the 
emotions  of  life,  but  at  the  same  time  they  lack 
the  bracing  qualities  which  real  joys  and  real 
sorrows  bring  with  them.     He  who  has 

"let  his   feelings  run  in  soft  luxurious  flow 
Shrinks   when   hard   service   must   be    done,    and   faints   at 
every  blow." 

To  the  mind  which  has  been  drugged  with  bar- 
ren feeling,  and  some  artists  do  thus  drug  their 
minds,  real  life  seems  unprofitable  and  common- 
place, its  everyday  friction  intolerable.  That  is 
one  reason  why  the  artist  is  so  often  irritable 
over  little  things,  he  is  "ein  Mai  in  Himmel  und 
das  nachste  Mai  in  Keller" ;  when  he  does  descend 
to  earth,  he  actually  goes  beneath  the  earth. 

But  there  is  frequently  a  bitterness  about  the 
artist  that  lies  deeper  than  petty  irritability,  the 
bitterness  which  artists  too  often  feel  toward  each 
other.  This,  however,  is  not  confined  to  artists. 
A  friend  once  said  to  me  of  a  very  sweet  young 
girl  "She  is  so  uniformly  sweet,  because  she  has 
nothing  of  the  spirit  of  the  reformer  in  her." 
And  when  I  read  the  history  of  the  movement 
which  we  have  agreed  to  call  pre-eminently  the 
Reformation,  just  as  Mrs.  Poyser  said  "Women 
are  mostly  foolish,  the  Lord  Almighty  made  them 
to  match  the  men,"  so  I  am  inclined  to  say  "Re- 
formers mostly  hate  each  other,  the  Lord  Al- 
mighty made  them  to  match  the  artists."     Nor 


THE  ARTIST  65 

is  the  reason  far  to  seek  in  either  case.  Earnest 
men  with  a  message,  whether  artists  or  reformers, 
are  so  sure  that  their  truth  is  truth,  that  their 
message  is  the  right  message,  that  they  cannot 
bear  that  anyone  should  deliver  a  false  message, 
or  that  the  world  should  receive  it.  It  is  almost 
St.  Paul's  feeling  when  he  wrote,  "If  we  or  an 
angel  from  heaven  should  preach  any  other  doc- 
trine to  you  from  that  which  ye  have  received,  let 
him  be  anathema."  The  great  artist  or  the  great 
reformer  may  have  grace  to  see  that  his  message 
and  the  other  are  both  true,  and  that  instead  of 
being  antagonistic,  they  are  complementary;  or 
that  if  the  other  message  be  nothing,  it  will  come 
to  naught,  but  that  if  it  be  of  God,  he  cannot 
overthrow  it;  but  few  men,  whether  artists  or  re- 
formers, are  great  in  all  respects.  Where  the 
artist's  bitterness  is  really  jealousy  (it  is  often 
falsely  so-called)  it  does  not  arise  from  the  fact 
that  he  is  an  artist,  but  from  the  fact  that  he  is 
a  man  with  considerable  of  the  old  Adam  in  him. 
Indeed  it  is  to  be  attributed  not  to  the  artist  in 
him,  but  to  his  failure  to  be  completely  an  artist ; 
that  is,  to  the  fact  that  he  cares  not  so  much  about 
art  as  about  reputation. 

Art  too  tends  to  separate  the  artist  from  other 
men,  because  though  in  one  sense  it  broadens  his 
sympathies,  in  another  sense  it  frequently  nar- 
rows them.  For  while  the  artist  sympathizes 
with  both  the  good  and  the  evil,  the  beautiful  and 
the  hideous,  it  is  difficult  for  him  to  feel  an  in- 


m  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

terest  in  the  mediocre  and  the  commonplace, 
which  generally  expresses  itself  in  the  conven- 
tional. The  man  whose  morality  is  conventional, 
or  whose  religion  expresses  itself  in  conventional 
forms,  does  not  seem  sincere  to  him.  That  is  one 
reason  why  the  artist,  even  the  artist  with  a  deeply 
religious  nature,  frequently  does  not  like  church 
services.  He  whose  whole  business  it  is  to  pene- 
trate into  the  truth  of  things,  to  find  proper  ex- 
pression for  the  truth  which  he  sees,  feels  that 
conventional  morality,  conventional  religion,  the 
ordinary  church  services  do  not  ring  true.  Bad 
taste  itself  is  something  that  is  not  true;  services 
are  in  bad  taste  when  they  are  not  true  expres- 
sions of  the  heart.  But  does  not  the  artist  some- 
times interpret  failure  to  express,  which  after  all 
comes  with  practice,  to  mean  failure  to  feel  and 
to  know?  Of  course  we  do  not  feel  and  know 
quite  clearly,  until  we  are  able  to  express  that 
which  we  feel  and  know.  We  clarify  the  feeling 
by  expressing  it,  and  yet  we  may  feel  truly  and 
deeply  without  feeling  clearly.  Even  "frothing 
spume  and  frequent  sputter,"  sometimes  "prove 
that  the  soul's  depths  boil  in  earnest,"  though 
the  frothing  spume  and  frequent  sputter  do  not 
seem  the  fitting  expression   for  it. 

Perhaps  the  artist's  impatience  with  the  medio- 
cre and  the  commonplace  arises  from  his  not  being 
artist  enough;  for  while  on  the  one  hand  he  lives 
too  exclusively  in  the  spiritual,  that  is  in  the 
ideal  world,   on  the   other  hand  he  is   often   too 


THE  ARTIST  67 

materialistic,  or  at  least  too  sensuous ;  he  becomes 
too  dependent  upon  the  senses,  that  only  is  beau- 
tiful to  him  which  appeals  to  his  senses,  sound, 
form,  color,  verbal  beauty  of  expression  and  so 
forth.  But  if  he  could  only  see  beneath  the  sur- 
face, he  might  find  that  beautiful  and  interesting 
whose  outward  manifestation  is  very  common- 
place. Mr.  Browning  has  been  criticized  because 
he  makes  Pippa,  a  simple  silk-winding  girl,  talk 
like  a  female  Paracelsus,  Tresham  when  he  has  to 
tell  Mildred  that  he  has  killed  her  lover,  stop  to 
remind  her  how  as  children  they  had  gathered 
water-lilies  together,  Paracelsus  utter  a  profound 
speech  several  hundred  lines  long,  and  then  in- 
stantly expire.  But  Browning  himself  answers 
this  criticism  when  in  his  essay  on  Shelley,  he  says 
that  it  is  the  poet's  business  to  see  "not  what  man 
sees,  but  what  God  sees."  It  is  true  that  Pippa, 
Tresham  and  Paracelsus  would  not,  had  they  been 
in  the  flesh,  have  spoken  as  Browning  makes  them 
speak;  he  puts  into  their  mouths  not  what  they 
would  have  said,  not  perhaps  what  they  would 
even  have  consciously  thought,  but  what  perhaps 
unconsciously  to  themselves,  God  saw  that  they 
were  trying  to  say,  were  trying  to  think. 

"Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed 
Into  a  narrow  act, 

Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped, 
All  I  could  never  be, 
All  men  ignored  in  me, 

This  I  was  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the  pitcher 
shaped." 


68  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

We  dumb  children  of  earth  do  have  many  strug- 
gling, incoherent  thoughts  for  which  no  one  gives 
us  credit,  for  which  we  do  not  give  ourselves 
credit,  because  we  cannot  express  them.  It  is  the 
artist's  business  to  say  for  us  that  which  we  long 
to  say,  and  cannot. 

While  in  a  deep  and  broad  sense  the  artist 
generally  understands  people  better  than  they 
understand  themselves,  this  understanding  does 
not  always  help  him  to  adapt  himself  to  them,  so 
he  does  not  get  the  credit  for  it.  He  often  holds 
himself  aloof  from  people,  or  is  silent  when  he  is 
with  them,  frequently  seems  unable  to  adapt  him- 
self to  general  conversation,  is  occasionally  lack- 
ing in  tact.  Because  of  this  lack  of  adaptability, 
he  who  makes  experiencing,  reflecting  upon  and 
expressing  experiences,  the  business  of  life  is  con- 
stantly being  told  that  he  is  lacking  in  experi- 
ence. And  doubtless  there  is  a  real  truth  in  this ; 
he  seeks  experience  a  little  too  eagerly  to  find  it. 
For  when  a  man  is  very  much  absorbed  in  experi- 
encing, he  cannot  be  absorbed  in  experiences. 
The  consciousness  that  he  is  experiencing  becomes 
stronger  than  the  experience.  He  whose  main 
business  it  is  to  understand  life  often  in  some 
measure  foregoes  living.  "When  one  becomes  too 
deeply  absorbed  in  the  midst  of  things,"  Goethe 
says,  "it  is  impossible  to  think  about  their  begin- 
ning and  end."  When  Goethe  was  a  very  young 
man  he  asked  his  friend  Behrisch  what  experience 
was,  and  was  told  that  "Experience  is  properly 


THE  ARTIST  69 

what  an  experienced  man  experiences  in  experi- 
encing his  experiences."  That  is  the  kind  of  ex- 
perience that  the  artist  is  likely  to  get,  an  experi- 
ence of  experience.  For  he  holds  himself  aloof 
from  things  in  order  that  he  may  see  whence  they 
come  and  whither  they  go,  without  being  too  much 
occupied  by  details.  He  mingles  with  the  real 
world  chiefly  in  order  that  he  may  people  his  ideal 
world.  While  his  intense  internal  activity  does 
not  destroy  perception,  he  frequently  perceives 
only  that  he  may  conceive.  In  conversation 
therefore  he  often  betrays  a  lack  of  that  instinct- 
ive sympathy  which  is  the  cement  of  good  society. 
Too  much  is  going  on  in  his  own  mind  for  him 
to  be  very  sensitive  to  what  is  going  on  in  other 
people's  minds.  With  him  thought  cannot  yield 
even  to  sympathy.  Goethe  tells  us  that  he  often 
thought  of  his  companion  as  though  he  were  his 
portrait ;  he  neither  spoke  nor  listened,  but  he  con- 
sidered him  as  a  picture,  as  a  whole,  especially  as 
regarded  himself  and  his  relations  to  him,  so  too 
great  interest  in  the  whole  man  excluded  all  in- 
terest in  the  partial  man.  But  men  wish  their 
companions  to  be  interested  in  the  partial  selves 
which  they  are  striving  at  the  time  to  reveal,  not 
in  the  whole  selves  which  they  either  do  not  know, 
or  if  they  do  know,  they  wish  to  conceal. 

It  seems  almost  a  contradiction  after  this  to 
say  that  the  artist  is  held  aloof  from  society 
partly  by  an  over-sensitive  nature,  and  yet  this 
is  true.     For  to  be  an  artist  it  is  necessary  to  be 


70  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

very  impressionable,  and  the  impressionable  man 
is  almost  always  the  sensitive  man.  The  sensitive 
man  shrinks  from  companionship  that  is  foreign 
to  his  nature;  he  must  have  full  fellowship  or 
none.  Thus  Goethe  says  of  Stilling  that  where 
he  was  not  known,  he  was  silent,  where  he  was 
known  and  not  loved,  he  was  sad. 

But  just  in  proportion  as  the  artist  shrinks 
from  mere  acquaintances,  so  much  the  more  does 
he  desire  real  companionship,  the  companionship 
that  means  absolute  trust,  absolute  sympathy. 
It  is  not  good  for  a  man  to  be  alone  in  the  ideal 
world  any  more  than  in  the  real  world;  indeed  in 
the  ideal  world  the  loneliness  is  more  intense,  for 
the  more  that  there  is  to  share,  the  greater  the 
need  of  sharing  it.  George  Eliot  says  that  it  is 
difficult  to  create,  except  as  one  has  the  assurance 
that  what  is  infinitely  dear  to  one's  self  is  infinitely 
dear  to  some  one  else;  she  attributed  her  success 
in  authorship  to  her  association  with  George 
Henry  Lewes.  And  if  in  his  creative  moments 
the  artist  needs  the  stimulus  of  love,  equally  in 
moments  of  exhaustion,  and  nothing  exhausts  as 
art  does,  does  he  need  love  and  sympathy  upon 
which  to  rest.  Then  because  the  artist  is  and 
must  be  a  most  impressionable  person,  with  vary- 
ing and  contradictory  impressions  and  emotions, 
he  needs  some  one  to  quiet  his  restless  spirit,  to 
assure  him  that  there  are  some  things  which  are 
fixed  and  constant.  I  find  this  need  best  ex- 
pressed in  the  life  of  Jenny  Lind  where  it  is  said 


THE  ARTIST  71 

of  her,  "She  needed  a  strong  and  steady  per- 
sonal influence  at  the  back  of  her  life,  to  calm 
her  agitation,  to  control  her  uncertainties,  to 
abide  constant  throughout  her  reactions,  to  dissi- 
pate her  suspicions,  to  fix  her  emotions,  to  anchor 
her  conscience.  She  had  all  the  fervors  and  the 
lapses,  the  starts  and  the  recoils  of  a  dramatic 
genius ;  and  firm  and  high  as  was  her  moral  ideal, 
its  very  force  brought  it  into  confused  collision 
with  the  bewilderment  of  circumstances,  and  it 
was  as  liable  to  perplex  and  distress  her  as  to 
cheer  and  impel.  This  made  her  passionately  feel 
for  something  which  could  from  without  buttress 
and  reassure  her  spiritual  intentions.  Shaken  as 
she  herself  often  was  by  the  strong  emotions  which 
swept  across  her  soul,  she  needed  an  external 
mark,  a  sign,  a  symbol  of  the  unshaken  security 
of  the  moral  end  in  which  she  trusted.  Someone 
ought  to  be  near  at  hand  to  assure  her  that  all 
was  well,  that  her  belief  in  goodness  had  not 
played  her  false."  1 

While  many  artists  have  been  ideally  mated, 
they  seem  more  likely  to  be  successful  in  friend- 
ship than  in  marriage,  probably  because  in  friend- 
ship there  is  less  need  for  contact  with  the  details 
of  the  real  world  than  in  marriage.  Goethe  has 
put  into  words  what  many  an  artist  has  felt  about 
his  friends.  He  tells  us  that  he  gathered  about 
him  in  Weimar  a  circle  of  wise  men  who  "con- 

i  Holland  and  Rockstro  "Jenny  Lind,  The  Artist." 


72  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

stituted  for  him  a  home."  His  friendships  were 
in  every  case  founded  upon  the  "religious  senti- 
ments, intellectual  sympathies,  the  affairs  of  the 
heart  which  are  imperishable" ;  he  loved  his  friends 
because  they  "helped  him  to  good  thoughts." 
Where  he  found  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
sympathy  which  he  craved,  he  threw  aside  all  re- 
serve; his  one  desire  was  to  turn  himself  inside 
out,  that  his  friend  might  comprehend  his  spirit's 
life.  Of  his  first  intellectual  friendship,  that  with 
Jacobi,  he  says  "Such  a  relationship  was  new  to 
me,  and  excited  a  passionate  longing  for  further 
communion.  At  night,  after  we  had  parted  and 
retired  to  our  chambers,  I  often  sought  him  again. 
With  the  moonlight  streaming  over  the  broad 
Rhine,  we  stood  at  the  window  and  revelled  in  the 
full  interchange  of  ideas,  which  in  such  splendid 
moments  of  confidence  swell  forth  so  abundantly." 
But  Goethe's  supreme  friendship  was  that  with 
Schiller,  and  the  beauty  of  this  connection,  he 
says,  lay  in  the  fact  that  they  found  the  strongest 
bond  of  union  in  their  exertions  to  reach  a  common 
aim,  and  "had  no  need  for  what  is  ordinarily  called 
friendship."  The  desire  to  determine  whether  he 
or  his  friend  wrote  certain  lines,  he  denounced  as 
Philistine,  "As  if  it  were  of  any  importance  to 
determine  which  of  us  wrote  them !  Friends  such 
as  we  were,  intimate  for  years,  in  habits  of  daily 
intercourse,  live  so  truly  in  one  another  that  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  determine  whether  single 
thoughts  belong  to  one  or  to  the  other." 


THE  ARTIST  73 

In  my  essay  on  friendship  I  dwelt  upon  the 
danger  that  an  emotional  friendship  may  be  the 
enemy  of  work.  I  cannot  feel  that  in  the  case  of 
the  real  artist  there  is  much  danger  that  work 
will  suffer  because  of  love ;  his  love  will  rather  be- 
come material  with  which  to  feed  his  art;  he  will 
work  because  he  loves,  and  love  because  he  works. 
Every  poet  lover  or  friend  can  sing 

"  O  danke  nicht  fur  diese  Lieder, 
Mir  ziemt  es  dankbar  dir  zu  sein. 
Du  gabst  sie  mir,  ich  gebe  wieder, 
Was  jetzt  und  einst  und  ewig  dein." 

The  danger  is  not  that  the  artist's  work  may 
suffer  because  of  his  love,  but  that  his  love  may 
suffer  because  of  his  work.  The  artist  more  than 
other  men  craves  love  and  sympathy,  but  he  fre- 
quently craves  them  selfishly;  he  demands  more 
than  he  can  possibly  give ;  he  is  too  much  wrapped 
up  in  his  own  life  and  work  to  give  as  much  as  he 
gets,  nor  does  he  realize  that  the  sympathy  which 
he  constantly  demands  takes  strength.  Did 
Jacobi  also  seek  Goethe  at  midnight,  I  wonder? 
was  it  as  much  of  a  joy  to  him  to  give  sympathy 
as  it  was  to  Goethe  to  receive  it?  or  was  he  dis- 
turbed by  being  kept  up  late  at  night?  Did  he 
too  pour  out  his  soul  to  Goethe,  and  did  he  get  as 
much  sympathy  as  he  gave?  or  when  he  tried  it 
did  he  find  Goethe  so  absorbed  in  his  own 
thoughts,  that  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  his 
function  must  be  to  listen,  to  give  sympathy,  not 


74  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

to  expect  it  in  return?  Is  the  artist's  love  an  un- 
selfish devotion  which  desires  to  make  sacrifices 
for  the  sake  of  the  beloved?  Gifts  he  probably 
will  lavish  if  he  can,  for  they  minister  to  the  sa- 
cred fire  of  his  love,  and  for  his  work's  sake  it  is 
necessary  that  he  should  not  outgrow  his  love,  for 
it  is  his  love  that  gives  life  to  his  work.  But  is 
he  not  in  danger  of  looking  upon  his  love  as  simply 
material  for  and  stimulus  to  art? 

"  And  love  me,  love  me,  little  one. 

That  I  of  bliss  may  sing; 
Then  leave  me,  that  with  tears  and  woe, 

My  mournful  song  may  ring, 
And  die !     My  song  must  know  death  too, 

And  what  its  sorrows  are, 
That  it  may  know  despair's  true  ring; 

Die  then  !     I  am  Cobzar  !  " 

The  test  in  the  artist's  case  is  not  does  he  work 
better  because  he  loves,  he  could  hardly  help  doing 
that,  but  could  he  give  up  his  work  because  he 
loves?  Yet  we  must  not  ask  too  much  of  him,  for 
what  man  could  give  up  his  life's  work  for  love's 
sake?  There  is  a  sense  in  which  to  almost  every 
man  work  comes,  and  perhaps  should  come  before 
love.  He  can  bear  his  wife's  death  with  more 
equanimity  than  he  can  the  permanent  giving  up 
of  his  work,  and  even  interruptions  are  almost  in- 
tolerable. A  woman's  work  is  ordinarily  to  care 
for  those  whom  she  loves,  to  make  them  comfort- 
able in  direct  personal  ways ;  hence  what  seem  like 
constant  interruptions  are  not  real  interruptions, 


THE  ARTIST  75 

but  a  part  of  her  work ;  she  fulfills  her  life  best  by 
submitting  to  them,  but  generally  speaking  the 
man  who  allows  himself  to  be  interrupted  is  to  be 
blamed.  We  do  not  find  fault  with  the  man  be- 
cause he  does  not  fill  the  woman's  place,  nor  with 
the  woman  because  she  does  not  fill  the  man's  place. 
So  perhaps  we  should  not  require  of  the  artist  that 
he  give  us  all  that  he  has  to  give,  and  then  all 
that  he  would  have  to  give  if  he  were  not  an  artist. 
The  greatest  artists  have  probably  been  all-round 
men,  but  we  cannot  all  be  greatest.  Some  other 
things  must  generally  be  sacrificed  to  success  in 
art,  but  let  the  artist  understand  that  he  sacri- 
fices them,  not  because  the  artist's  life  is  more 
important  than  other  men's  lives,  but  because  it 
is  his  life,  and  every  man  must  follow  his  own 
star;  and  let  him  not  demand  of  others  sacrifices 
which  he  would  not  be  willing  to  make  for  them. 
In  art,  as  in  everything  else,  true  greatness  lies 
in  balance,  in  being  able  to  see  proportions. 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT 

In  connection  with  my  meditations  upon  the 
artist,  I  have  thought  often  of  the  study  of  an 
artistic  temperament  which  Mr.  Barrie  has  given 
us  in  "Sentimental  Tommy"  and  "Tommy  and 
Grizel."  Tommy,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  the 
child  of  a  masterful  man  and  an  imaginative  wo- 
man. All  through  his  childhood  he  was  troubled 
by  the  fact  that  there  seemed  to  be  so  many  people 
within  him.  When  he  grew  to  man's  estate  he 
was  very  shy  of  the  ladies,  and  yet  he  wrote  a 
book  on  woman  which  proved  to  be  the  book  of 
the  day.  So  the  ladies  united  to  adore  him;  it 
was  suggested  that  his  wisdom  on  the  subject  of 
the  gentler  sex  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had 
loved  a  beautiful  girl  who  had  died.  Tommy  him- 
self accepted  the  suggestion,  called  his  dead  lady- 
love Mildred,  and  almost  came  to  believe  that  she 
had  really  existed. 

After  this  he  made  love  to  all  the  ladies  whom 
he  met  just  to  see  how  it  felt  to  be  making  love. 
Then  he  returned  to  Thrums,  his  boyhood's  home, 
and  his  old  playmate  Grizel,  the  Painted  Lady's 
daughter,  was  disappointed  because  she  could  not 
respect  him.      So  he  made  up  his  mind  that  she 

76 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       77 

should  respect  him,  and  in  an  heroic  sentimental 
mood  he  rescued  a  boy  from  drowning.  After 
this  he  began  to  think  that  Grizel  loved  him, 
therefore  he  made  most  violent  love  to  her,  and 
she,  who  had  always  wanted  to  love  him,  but  had 
not  permitted  herself  to  do  so  until  she  was  sure 
that  he  wanted  her  to,  now  gave  herself  wholly  to 
the  joy  of  loving.  Then  the  artist  in  Tommy 
rebelled  against  marriage  with  the  commonplace 
duties  that  it  would  bring  with  it,  and  at  last  he 
had  to  tell  Grizel  so.  Later  the  broken-hearted 
Grizel  hears  him  make  love  to  Lady  Pippinworth, 
a  married  woman  whom  at  heart  he  despises,  but 
whose  proud  scornfulness  he  wishes  to  subdue. 
The  result  is  that  she  loses  her  mind  temporarily, 
and  Tommy,  overcome  by  remorse  and  affection 
(affection,  not  love)  marries  her  in  her  insanity 
and  takes  care  of  her  most  tenderly  for  eighteen 
months  until  her  mind  returns  to  her.  Yet  with 
all  his  striving  he  could  not  really  change  him- 
self. "They  say  that  we  always  can  when  we  try 
hard  enough,"  Mr.  Barrie  says,  "so  I  suppose  that 
Tommy  did  not  try  hard  enough."  In  the  end  he 
dies  most  ignominiously,  strangled  by  his  great 
coat,  which  caught  on  a  nail  in  the  garden  wall 
that  he  was  endeavoring  to  scale  in  order  to  get 
to  Lady  Pippinworth.  And  Grizel,  who  knew  all, 
thought  it  all  out  calmly  for  herself,  and  to  her 
latest  breath  continued  to  love  Tommy  just  the 
same.  And  when  Mr.  Barrie  speculates  as  to 
why  Grizel  loved  Tommy,  Grizel  who  saw  through 


78  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

him  so  well,  and  who  demanded  so  much  of  men,  he 
remembers  the  look  that  was  wont  to  come  into 
her  face  when  she  bent  over  a  little  child.  And 
he  sums  up  Tommy's  whole  character  when  he 
says,  "I  see  that  all  that  was  wrong  with  him  was 
that  he  could  not  always  be  a  boy."  That  is  the 
keynote  to  Tommy's  failings,  and  because  I  be- 
lieve it  to  be  the  keynote  of  many  an  artist's  fail- 
ings, I  have  been  led  to  make  a  special  study  of 
him. 

From  morning  to  night  the  child  lives  in  a 
world  of  illusions ;  his  whole  life  consists  in  play- 
ing that  people  and  things  are  not  what  they  are. 
The  pleasure  of  the  game  does  not  even  consist 
in  playing  that  they  are  better  and  grander  than 
they  are;  it  is  sufficient  that  they  should  be  differ- 
ent from  what  they  are.  "Have  a  different  name 
from  your  real  name,"  said  a  child  of  three,  "be- 
cause it  isn't  any  fun  to  have  the  same  name  that 
you  really  have."  Because  this  world  of  illusions 
may  be  entered  without  money  and  without  price, 
the  children  of  the  hovel  are  as  happy  as  the  chil- 
dren of  the  palace. 

In  this  realm  of  the  imagination  the  artist 
lives  to  the  close  of  his  life.  We  all  of  us  when 
we  are  children  dream  of  Thrums ;  but  compara- 
tively few  of  us  even  as  children  can  put  our 
dreams  into  words,  and  after  awhile  we  cease  even 
to  dream.  The  artist  is  the  child  who  becomes 
more  and  more  of  a  child  as  the  years  go  on, 
with  more  and  more  power  to  make  the  rest  of  us 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       79 

children.  Dreaming  more  vividly  every  year,  he 
gains  more  and  more  power  to  express  his  dreams. 
More  and  more  is  he  able  to  carry  us  back  to  the 
days  when  we  dreamed  ourselves. 

To  this  grown-up  child  too  it  is  not  necessary 
that  things  be  better  and  grander  than  they  are 
in  order  that  they  may  be  interesting.  The  one 
essential  to  him  too  is  that  they  be  different. 
"This  is  my  birthday,"  writes  Sonya  Kovalevsky 
in  her  diary,  "and  I  am  thirty-one  years  old."  In 
a  footnote  her  biographer  says  "It  was  not  her 
birthday,  and  that  was  not  her  age."  The 
youthful  Shelley  was  in  the  habit  of  writing  let- 
ters to  people  under  assumed  names.  The  young 
Goethe  loved  to  go  about  the  country  incognito, 
and  this  too  before  he  had  attained  a  reputation 
which  might  subject  him  to  inconvenience  in 
traveling.  There  was  no  object  in  it.  It  was 
simply  that  he  might  be  something  that  he  was 
not;  that  he  might  continue  the  game,  which  he 
had  begun  as  a  child. 

To  the  perfect  actor  the  play  is  much  more 
real  than  the  reality.  "I  am  sorry  that  you  felt 
so  badly,"  said  the  little  girl  to  the  big  brother, 
who  by  an  oratorical  effort  had  moved  some  of 
his  audience  to  tears.  "I  didn't  feel  badly,"  was 
the  indignant  reply,  "I  only  wanted  to  make  other 
people  feel  badly."  That  boy  was  not  a  perfect 
artist.  The  perfect  artist  feels  badly  himself,  or 
thinks  that  he  does.  Indeed  perhaps  the  only 
criterion   by   which   the   supreme   artist    can   dis- 


80  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

tinguish  between  the  world  of  his  imagination, 
and  the  world  of  sense,  is  in  the  fact  that  the 
former  is  more  real  to  him  than  the  latter. 
Wordsworth  had,  at  times,  to  convince  himself  of 
the  existence  of  the  external  world  by  clasping 
a  tree  or  anything  else  that  happened  to  be  near 
him.  Shelley  had  a  period  in  which  he  doubted 
the  existence  of  the  You. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  existence  of  the  You  that 
is  doubtful.  The  existence  of  the  I  is  even  more 
dubious.  There  is  not  one  of  the  various  selves 
that  the  child  or  the  artist  imagines  himself  to  be, 
that  is  not  more  real  than  the  one  self  that  ap- 
pears to  the  world.  "There  is  a  deal  of  Hart- 
leys," said  the  five-year-old  Hartley  Coleridge: 
"there  is  Picture  Hartley,  and  Shadow  Hartley, 
and  there's  Echo  Hartley,  and  there's  Catch-me- 
fast  Hartley."  And  there  is  a  "deal"  of  persons 
in  every  child.  The  difference  is  that  the  deal  of 
Hartleys  and  of  Tommies  are  persistent.  Char- 
acter-formation is  a  narrowing  as  well  as  a  deep- 
ening process.  We  all  of  us  probably  have  at  the 
beginning  the  material  for  more  than  one  person. 
Training,  environment,  the  force  of  our  own  will, 
determine  which  one  of  the  numerous  persons  that 
are  born  in  us  shall  prevail.  That  one  gradually 
destroys  the  others,  and  strengthens  himself. 
Experience  we  say  is  broadening.  Perhaps  it 
would  be  just  as  correct  to  say  that  it  is  narrow- 
ing. For  to  have  experienced  one  thing  very 
deeply,    so   deeply   that   it  has   become  part   and 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       81 

parcel  of  the  being,  a  motive-force  in  the  life 
shuts  out  the  possibility  of  experiencing  certain 
other  things. 

The  true  Tommy  refuses  to  experience  anything 
m  such  a  way  as  to  exclude  the  possibility  of  any 
other    experience.     He    "lives    with    the    world's 
life,"  not  so  much  because  he  has  "renounced  his 
own,"  as  because  he  has  no  life  of  his  own  to  re- 
nounce.    With    abounding   child-life,   he    has    no 
grown-up  life  in  order  that  he  may  be  free  to  live 
m  turn  the  grown-up  lives  of  every  one  of  the  rest 
of  us.     And  because  he  lives  not  one  life  but  many, 
he  understands  the  lives  of  every  one  of  us  better 
than  we  understand  them  ourselves.     He  under- 
stands the  individual  life,  because  he  understands 
life  itself.     We  say  that  it  is  through  experience 
that  we  come  to  know  life.     But  experience  often 
closes  the  eyes  to  the  deeper  meaning  of  life. 

Not  that  the  man  of  artistic  temperament  does 
not  feel.     On  the  contrary,  he  feels  much  more 
violently  than   other  men   do,  just   as   the   child 
feels  more  violently  than  the  man.     There  is  no 
joy  equal  to  the  violent  joy  of  the  child.     Nor  is 
there  any  despair  equal  to  the  despair  of  the  im- 
aginative child.     For  the  child  who  is  very  much 
a  child,  self-control  in  either  joy  or  sorrow,  is  al- 
most or  quite  an  impossibility.     The  man  knows 
that  nothing  is  important  enough  to  lose  himself 
over.     But  if  the  child's  feeling  is  more  violent 
than  the  man's,  it  is  less  intense  and  less  lasting. 
The  greater  violence  and  the  shorter  duration 


82  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

of  the  child's  emotion  spring  from  the  same  cause. 
He  is  violent,  because  for  the  time  being  he  gives 
himself  wholly  to  one  feeling.  There  is  no  other 
to  interfere  with,  or  modify  it.  But  the  emotion 
does  not  last,  because  just  as  soon  as  another 
emotion  arises,  it  takes  complete  possession,  even 
as  the  former  did.  In  the  child's  case,  the  former 
disappears.  In  the  case  of  the  artist  pure  and 
simple,  it  remains  to  be  enshrined  as  a  work  of  art. 
In  a  sense  he  continues  to  feel  it  always,  but  it 
is  no  longer  the  original  feeling  that  predomi- 
nates. It  is  rather  the  feeling  that  he  has  felt. 
In  the  artist's  case,  as  in  the  child's,  this  often 
gets  the  better  of  the  real  feeling  even  while  the 
real  feeling  lasts.  I  have  sometimes  wondered 
whether  it  was  altogether  because  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  language,  that  Tennyson  "sometimes 
held  it  half  a  sin,  to  put  in  words  the  grief  he 
felt."  Did  not  the  sin  lie  partly  in  the  fact  that 
in  clothing  grief  in  beautiful  words,  admiration 
for  the  sorrow  became  stronger  than  the  sorrow 
itself?  Yet  to  be  very  conscious  that  one  is  feel- 
ing, even  to  get  so  far  as  not  to  be  able  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  real  feeling  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  it,  does  not  exclude  real  feeling. 

The  child  enjoys  all  his  plays,  the  sad  ones  as 
well  as  the  glad  ones,  indeed  the  sad  ones  often 
more  than  the  glad  ones.  So  the  man  of  genius 
enjoys  all  his  plays,  and  the  sorrowful  ones  more 
than  the  happy  ones.  There  is  such  a  romance 
about  a   forlorn   existence.     There  is   such  a  su- 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       83 

periority  about  the  suffering  man.  Stern 
Thomas  Carlyle,  who  wrapped  himself  about  with 
melancholy,  as  with  a  garment,  speaks  of  a  "kind 
of  imperial  sorrow  that  is  almost  like  felicity. 
So  completely  and  composedly  wretched,  one  is 
equal  to  the  very  gods."  "I  have  heartily  en- 
joyed," says  Goethe,  "a  genuine  experience  of 
the  variegated  throng  and  press  of  the  world : 
Sorrow,  Hope,  Love,  Works,  Wants,  Adventure, 
Ennui,  Impatience,  Folly,  Joy,  the  Expected  and 
the  Unknown,  the  Superficial  and  the  Profound." 
He  had  enjoyed  all,  and  of  them  all  he  places 
Sorrow  first.  Denied  Lotte's  love,  he  gave  him- 
self up  for  a  time,  to  the  pleasures  of  melancholy. 
He  had  a  dagger  which  he  does  not  forget  to  say 
was  very  handsome.  This  he  placed  by  his  bed- 
side every  night,  and  before  extinguishing  his 
candle,  he  made  various  attempts  to  pierce  the 
sharp  point  a  couple  of  inches  into  his  breast. 
But  not  being  able  to  do  it,  he  laughed  himself 
out  of  the  notion,  and  decided  to  live.  Tommy, 
denied  the  luxury  of  unrequited  love,  must  needs 
write  a  book  on  the  subject.  And  he  was  never 
so  happy  as  when  contemplating  his  own  early 
death. 

Joy  and  Sorrow  in  the  abstract  impress  the 
child,  and  the  child-man  more  than  joy  and  sor- 
row in  the  concrete.  The  thought  of  Death  in 
the  abstract  is  uplifting  and  ennobling,  something 
to  be  dwelt  upon.  Death  in  the  concrete  is  some- 
thing to   be   banished   from   the  mind.     A   four- 


84  IK  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

year-old  girl,  who  had  heard  of  a  mother  who  had 
lost  her  child,  said  to  her  own  mother,  "Does  she 
ever  laugh  now?"  Being  told  that  she  did,  she 
said  in  a  shocked  voice,  "Mother!  how  can  she?" 
Yet  if  the  dead  child  had  been  in  her  own  house, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  she  would  have  been  inter- 
ested in  her  play  long  before  the  funeral.  The 
impression  which  the  abstract  makes  upon  the 
mind  is  at  the  same  time  deeper  and  less  deep 
than  that  made  by  the  concrete.  It  is  more  awe- 
inspiring,  but  less   life-determining. 

The  loves  of  the  poets  have  generally  been 
numerous.  Why  is  it  that  they  who  enshrine 
love  for  us,  are  themselves  such  inconstant  lovers? 
Is  it  because  love-making  is  for  them  just  the  most 
delightful  of  all  plays?  Like  all  the  other  plays, 
it  is  very  real  while  it  lasts.  And  it  is  as  far  re- 
moved from  intentional  cruelty  as  any  play  could 
possibly  be.  If  only  every  one  had  understood 
with  Corp  that  Tommy's  love-making  was  "just 
another  o'  his  plays,"  no  harm  would  have  been 
done  by  it. 

With  marriage  the  play  ends.  The  realities  of 
life,  from  which  the  artist  shrinks,  crowd  upon  him 
as  never  before.  It  becomes  less  and  less  possible 
to  live  so  exclusively  in  the  spirit.  When  Levine 
in  "Anna  Karenina"  looked  forward  to  the  bliss  of 
married  life,  he  did  not  take  into  consideration 
the  fact  that  his  wife  must  work.  The  realization 
of  this  was  for  a  time  a  considerable  drawback  to 
his  happiness. 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       85 

The  progress  of  the  lover  in  Plato's  Symposium 
is  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract.  From  love 
of  the  beautiful  in  his  beloved,  he  passes  onward 
to  the  love  of  Beauty  Absolute.  But  the  prog- 
ress of  the  artist-lover  is  from  the  abstract  to  the 
concrete.  He  loves  his  mistress  because  he  thinks 
he  sees  in  her  the  concrete  form  in  which  the  Ab- 
solute Beauty,  whose  he  is,  and  whom  he  serves, 
embodies  itself.  As  Emerson  would  say,  it  is  not 
the  beloved  one  whom  he  loves,  but  her  radiance. 
Coming  too  close  to  her,  the  radiance  is  dispelled. 

For  such  a  nature  an  unrequited  love  is  more 
lasting  than  love  requited.  So  long  as  there  is 
hope  the  game  continues.  And  there  is  more 
pleasure  in  struggle  than  in  possession.  "Man 
loves  to  conquer,"  says  Goethe,  "likes  not  to  feel 
secure."  When  all  hope  is  gone,  the  pleasures  of 
melancholy  remain,  and  for  the  head  of  the  be- 
loved there  is  an  immortal  halo.  The  pain  of 
disenchantment  can  never  come  to  the  lover. 
Beatrice,  the  mistress  of  Dante's  home,  would 
probably  have  become  prosaic,  tiresome,  even  ir- 
ritating. Beatrice,  the  unattained  and  unat- 
tainable, was  to  the  poet  life  below  and  star 
above. 

The  child  does  not  originate  his  games.  They 
are  all  suggested  to  him.  He  merely  adopts  and 
elaborates.  He  plays  that  he  is  someone  whom 
he  knows,  someone  of  whom  he  has  heard.  So 
with  Tommy.  He  did  not  originate  Mildred. 
She  was  suggested  to  him.     He  did  not  even  orig- 


86  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

inate  his  own  nobility  of  character.  That  too 
was  a  suggestion.  When  the  child  Tommy  spent 
a  shilling  for  a  picture  for  his  mother,  it  was  that 
he  might  give  her  pleasure.  It  was  after  she 
praised  his  nobility  that  he  discovered  that  "there 
ain't  many  as  noble  as  I  is."  The  man  Tommy, 
who  had  reasoned  the  boy  from  drowning,  "lay  on 
his  face  shivering,  not  from  cold,  not  from  shock, 
but  in  a  horror  of  himself.  It  was  not  water  that 
he  tried  to  shake  fiercely  from  him  when  he  rose; 
it  was  the  monstrous  part  of  him  that  had  done 
this  deed."  It  was  when  Grizel  admired  his  hero- 
ism and  modesty  that  he  again  admired  him- 
self. As  it  was  easy  to  make  him  believe  himself 
noble,  so  too  it  was  easy  to  make  him  believe  him- 
self base.  He  was  always  ill  at  ease  and  self- 
distrustful  with  people  who  did  not  admire  him. 

Originality,  we  are  accustomed  to  say,  is  the 
mark  of  genius.  But  perhaps  it  would  be  as  true 
to  say  that  the  man  of  genius  is  the  least  original 
of  all  men.  He  is  the  impressionable  man,  the 
man  whose  soul  lies  open  to  all  impressions,  as  the 
child's  soul  does,  the  man  who  can  combine  these 
impressions,  and  then  impress  them  back  upon 
those  who  have  impressed  them  upon  him.  He  is 
but  the  medium,  through  whom  all  men  find  ut- 
terance, voiceless  men  as  well  as  those  with 
voices. 

Where  it  is  so  difficult  to  distinguish  between 
the  internal  and  the  external  world,  where  per- 
sonal identity  even  is  so  uncertain,  it  is  not  pos- 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       87 

sible  that  the  line  between  truth  and  falsehood 
should  be  sharply  drawn.  There  is  no  deliberate 
deception.  It  is  the  artist  himself  who  is  de- 
ceived. "One  lies  more  to  one's  self  than  to  any 
one  else,"  Byron  wrote  in  his  diary.  And  that  is 
what  makes  the  case  almost  hopeless.  For  the 
lying  to  one's  self  is  unconscious.  Conscious  ly- 
ing may  be  corrected.  But  how  correct  uncon- 
scious lying?  "I  don't  know  what  my  Heavenly 
Father  is  going  to  do  about  me,"  said  the  four- 
year-old,  who  had  been  reproved  for  what  his  par- 
ents considered  too  active  an  imagination.  "I  tell 
so  many  stories,  I  suppose  my  Heavenly  Father 
will  have  to  put  a  stop  to  it  somehow.  But  I 
don't  see  how  He  is  going  to  begin."  Yes,  that 
is  the  trouble.  How  put  a  stop  to  Tommy's 
story-telling,  without  clipping  his  wings?  And 
is  it  possible  to  clip  his  wings,  even  if  it  be  de- 
sirable? 

In  the  world  of  illusions  in  which  the  child  lives, 
he  is  himself  the  central  figure.  For  him,  and  by 
him,  this  world  has  been  created.  He  has  indeed 
created  it  for  his  own  glory.  And  that  part  of 
the  external  world  which  he  knows  exists  almost 
as  much  for  him,  as  does  his  own  internal  world. 
For  him  his  father  earns  money;  for  him  his 
mother  toils.  God,  he  is  told,  has  made  the  world 
so  beautiful,  in  order  that  he  may  be  happy. 
Thus  every  child  is  an  egotist. 

The  discipline  of  life  takes  the  egotism  of  child- 
hood out  of  many  men,  but  rarely  out  of  the  art- 


88  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

ist.  For  while  other  men  succeed  largely  in  pro- 
portion to  their  ability  to  repress  themselves,  the 
artist  succeeds  in  proportion  to  his  ability  to  ex- 
press himself.  "Obliterate  yourself,"  was  Pym's 
advice  to  Tommy.  But  the  artist  who  really  ob- 
literated himself  would  be  an  absolute  failure. 
For  the  artist  has  nothing  to  give  the  world  but 
himself,  and  succeeds  just  in  proportion  as  he  is 
able  to  give  himself.  It  is  the  writer  who  brings 
his  reader  into  closest  contact  with  himself  who 
writes  for  all  time.  To  do  this,  it  is  necessary 
not  exactly  that  he  think  about  himself,  but  that 
he  completely  identify  himself  with  the  objects  of 
thought.  Scherer  says  of  Byron,  "He  has 
treated  hardly  any  subject  but  one,  himself," 
while  Scott  maintains  of  the  same  author  that  "he 
has  embraced  every  topic  of  human  life,  and 
sounded  everything  on  the  divine  harp,  from  its 
slightest  to  its  most  powerful  and  heart-astound- 
ing tones."  Are  not  both  statements  true,  and 
true  not  only  of  Byron,  but  of  every  writer  who 
can  be  called  great?  For  the  great  writer  is  he 
who  understands  and  writes  of  every  topic  of  hu- 
man life,  every  passion  of  the  human  heart,  and 
at  the  same  time  imparts  his  own  personality  to 
all  that  he  writes. 

To  the  making  of  an  artist,  both  society  and 
solitude  are  necessary,  society  in  which  to  ob- 
serve the  lives  of  others,  solitude  in  which  to  dis- 
cover the  motive-power  of  those  lives.  To  do  the 
latter  it  is  necessary  to  put  one's  self  in  every- 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       89 

body  else's  place  and  then  to  commune  with  one's 
own  heart. 

The  proportion  in  which  society  and  solitude 
should  mingle  vary  with  the  nature  of  the  genius. 
To  Shakespeare,  one  fancies  that  society  was  more 
necessary  than  to  Goethe.  To  Goethe,  solitude 
was  probably  more  essential  than  to  Shakespeare. 
For  Shakespeare  presents  men,  Goethe  thinks 
about  them,  and  through  them.  Shakespeare  is 
the  seer,  Goethe  the  thinker.  Not  that  Shakes- 
peare thinks  less  than  Goethe  does,  but  he  thinks 
less  consciously  and  makes  his  reader  less  con- 
scious of  his  thinking.  With  him  seeing  and 
thinking  are  one  thing.  There  are  times  when, 
to  detect  at  first  reading  that  Shakespeare  is 
thinking,  one  has  to  be  almost  as  quick  as  Shakes- 
peare himself. 

Goethe  went  much  into  society,  but  one  im- 
agines that  it  was  always  "as  the  gods,  apart." 
One  is  sure  that  Shakespeare  was  a  "good  fellow." 
There  is  a  certain  remoteness  about  Goethe's 
writings,  which  we  feel  is  a  reflection  of  the  re- 
moteness of  his  character.  He  is  further  from  the 
world  of  men  and  women  than  Shakespeare,  and 
yet  nearer  to  it.  Every  character  in  Shakes- 
peare is  someone  whom  the  reader  has  seen,  or 
at  least  someone  whom  he  is  sure  that  Shakes- 
peare had  seen.  Every  character  in  Goethe  is  the 
imaginative  reader's  self,  the  remote  idealized  self 
of  whom  every  dreamer  dreams. 

Tommy  in  his  character,  and  we  fancy  in  this 


90  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

respect  in  his  writings,  belongs  to  the  school  of 
Goethe  rather  than  to  that  of  Shakespeare.  It 
is  to  be  observed  that  it  is  only  the  imaginative 
reader  who  identifies  every  creation  of  Goethe  and 
of  Tommy  with  the  self.  Grizel  half  hoped  that 
Tommy's  woman  was  not  the  real  woman,  for  if 
she  were,  then  she,  Grizel  was  even  less  than  an 
average  woman.     But  Grizel  was  not  imaginative. 

It  is  this  egotism  of  the  artist  that  makes  so- 
ciety difficult  for  him.  Even  as  a  child  Tommy 
was  not  one  with  the  children  with  whom  he  played. 
They  were  all  more  or  less  his  puppets.  As  a 
man  he  was  awkward  and  shy  in  society,  until  so- 
ciety became  absorbed  in  him.  After  all,  is  it 
quite  just  to  him  to  call  it  egotism?  Was  it  not 
rather  that  he  lived  in  a  different  world  from  that 
in  which  other  people  lived,  and  was  at  home  with 
them  only  when  he  could  draw  them  into  his  world 
and  make  them  actors  in  it? 

Moreover  the  world  stands  in  the  way  of  the 
artist's  overcoming  his  egotism.  We  refrain 
from  praising  the  child,  lest  he  be  spoiled.  But 
the  man,  who  has  had  so  many  hard  knocks,  we 
think  that  he  can  stand  praise.  In  the  great 
artist's  case,  we  do  not  stop  to  consider  whether 
he  can  stand  it  or  not.  We  praise  because  he 
forces  our  praise.  But  when  the  artist-man  is  still 
a  child  he  cannot  stand  it.  Yet  the  very  thing 
that  is  spoiling  the  performer  is  necessary  to  the 
success  of  the  performance.  Were  it  not  for  an 
occasional  "Well  done,"  few  of  us  would  have  the 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       91 

courage  to  keep  on  with  our  work  day  after  day. 
While  the  artist's  work  may  be  play  it  is  more  ex- 
hausting than  any  work.  He  must  therefore  be 
sustained  by  sympathy.  No  great  work  of  Art, 
George  Henry  Lewes  tells  us,  is  produced  "with- 
out the  co-operation  of  the  nation."  Again,  is  it 
egotism?  Is  it  not  better  to  say  that  in  order  to 
paint  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  world,  it  is 
necessary  to  have  the  sympathy  of  the  world? 
How  go  on  with  one's  work,  year  after  year,  un- 
less there  is  some  evidence  of  success?  In 
some  lines  of  life  we  can  feel  that  we  succeed, 
whether  we  please  or  not.  But  while  no  great 
artist  works  to  please  people,  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  success  in  art  does  consist  in  pleasing  people. 
When  a  man  is  as  much  the  creature  of  impulse 
as  Tommy  was,  we  say  that  he  is  deficient  in  will. 
But  we  do  not  call  the  child  lacking  in  will  be- 
cause he  rushes  headlong  into  action.  On  the 
contrary  we  say  that  he  is  willful,  full  of  will — and 
in  the  old  days  parents  were  accustomed  to  say 
that  the  will  of  such  a  child  must  be  broken. 
There  are  no  parents  to  break  the  will  of  the 
Tommies,  the  Goethes,  the  Shelleys  and  the  By- 
rons.  Were  there  such  parents,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  they  would  succeed.  So  the  child's  will, 
the  performing  will,  remains.  The  man's  will, 
restraining,  renouncing  and  controlling,  does  not 
develop.  Self-development,  so  largely  an  activity 
of  the  performing  will,  is  the  natural  virtue  of 
childhood.     This    the    Tommies    have.     Self-con- 


92  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

trol,  the  activity  of  the  restraining  will,  is  the  ac- 
quired virtue  of  manhood.  To  this  the  Tommies 
do  not  attain.  Again,  it  is  the  artist  in  Tommy 
that  keeps  him  a  child.  Other  men  succeed  in 
proportion  as  they  hold  on  to  themselves,  the  art- 
ist in  proportion  as  he  lets  himself  go.  Other  men 
succeed  in  proportion  as  they  please  others,  the 
artist  in  proportion  as  he  pleases  himself,  as  he 
forces  others  to  be  pleased  with  what  pleases  him. 

The  creature  of  impulse  knows  not  the  war  in 
the  members  of  which  St.  Paul  writes.  Grizel  says 
that  she  has  not  a  beautiful  nature  like  Tommy's, 
she  is  so  often  rebellious.  She  is  rebellious  because 
she  is  a  moral  creature.  There  are  two  natures 
struggling  within  her.  Tommy  is  not  rebellious, 
because  he  does  not  fight.  When  an  impulse 
seizes  him,  there  is  nothing  within  him  to  contend 
against  it.  That  is,  he  is  not  a  moral  creature. 
I  have  somewhere  read  of  a  man  who  believed  that 
God  had  forgotten  to  give  him  a  soul.  It  would 
seem  almost  as  though  God  had  forgotten  to  give 
Tommy  a  moral  sense,  though  there  is  something 
within  him  that  thinks  about  the  moral  sense. 

Schiller  maintained  that  the  Fall  of  Man  was 
the  happiest  event  in  the  history  of  the  race,  for 
without  it  morality  would  have  been  impossible. 
Goethe,  on  the  other  hand,  thought  that  we  had 
paid  too  high  a  price  for  morality.  And  while  it 
is  certain  that  it  is  possible  to  be  below  morality, 
it  is  probable  that  it  is  possible  to  be  above  it. 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       93 

Under  "the  ultimate  angel's  law,  law,  life,  joy, 
impulse  are  one  thing." 

Even  here  there  are  some  in  whose  natures 
struggle  is  almost  absent.  There  may  be  a  few 
who  have  practically  no  impulses  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  fight,  whose  wills  not  only  in  the  main 
purpose,  but  in  each  detail,  are  naturally  one  with 
the  Divine  will.  They  are  God's  children  from  the 
very  beginning;  they  do  not  have  to  struggle  to 
become  so.  There  are  others,  who  have  the  lower 
impulses  to  some  extent,  but  in  whom  the  moral 
imperative  is  so  strong,  that  no  sooner  is  a 
thing  clearly  recognized  as  wrong,  than  there  is 
no  longer  any  desire  to  do  it.  With  such  per- 
sons the  effort  is  not  so  much  to  do  what  is  right 
as  to  find  out  what  is  right.  Lastly,  there  are 
the  children  and  the  Tommies,  who  act  at  once 
upon  their  impulses,  whether  lower  or  higher,  be- 
cause for  the  time  being  there  is  absolutely  noth- 
ing with  which  these  impulses  can  come  into  col- 
lision. Such  characters  are  not  without  their 
charm.  There  is  the  savage  within  us  that 
awakes  at  intervals  to  cry 

"Ship  me  somewhere  east  of  Suez  where  the  best  is  like 
the  worst, 
Where  there  ain't  no  Ten  Commandments,  an'  a  man  can 
raise  a  thirst." 

And  there  is  the  tired  man  within  us  that  loves  to 
think  that  Mr.  Richard  Harding  Davis'  delight- 


94  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

fill,  irresponsible  heroes  are  possible.  But  we 
know  that  in  real  life  blessings  do  not  abound 
wherever  the  Van  Bibbers  go.  A  broken-hearted 
and  demented  Grizel  in  Tommy's  case,  a  Harriet 
compassing  her  own  destruction  in  Shelley's  case, 
a  wrecked  empire  in  the  case  of  Alcibiades,  these 
are  the  things  that  follow  in  the  train  of  the  real 
Van  Bibbers. 

But  while  Tommy  belongs  to  this  third  class  of 
non-strugglers,  we  sometimes  wonder  what  it  is  in 
him  that  debars  him  from  the  first  class.  None 
of  his  impulses  are  in  themselves  evil.  Is  it  not 
again  that  he  is  simply  the  child,  the  child  who 
cannot  accommodate  himself  to  the  world  of 
grown-up  people,  especially  to  the  world  where 
they  marry  and  are  given  in  marriage? 

One  fancies  that  Tommy's  books  were  calm  and 
serene.  They  lifted  one  above  the  atmosphere  of 
reality  into  the  atmosphere  of  holiness,  where  no 
struggle  is.  His  dislike  for  struggle  was  prob- 
ably one  among  many  reasons  why  he  could  not 
write  stories.  In  the  essay-novel  he  could  present 
that  ideal  life  which  is  above  struggle.  In  the 
story  he  would  have  to  present  actual  life,  in  which 
there  is  naught  but  conflict. 

Hartley  Coleridge,  himself  a  Tommy,  says 
that  given  such  a  character,  the  likelihood  of  ac- 
tion is  inversely  as  the  force  of  the  motive  and  the 
time  for  reflection.  "  I  think  you  could  do  the 
most  courageous  things,"  Grizel  says  to  Tommy, 
"  so  long  as  there  was  no  reason  why  you  should 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       95 

do  them."  The  child  Grizel  had  said,  "  It  is  so 
easy  to  make  up  one's  mind !  "  "  It's  easy  to  you, 
that  has  just  one  mind,"  Tommy  retorted,  "  but 
if  you  had  as  many  minds  as  I  have !  "  The  im- 
pulsive man  acts  with  energy  and  decision  because 
he  allows  no  time  for  the  imagination  to  work. 
But  if  immediate  action  is  impossible  the  imagina- 
tive man  will  perhaps  not  act  at  all.  He  will  see 
that  there  is  as  much  to  be  said  upon  one  side  as 
the  other.  And  the  more  important  action  is  the 
less  likely  will  he  be  to  act.  The  very  importance 
of  the  decision  which  he  has  to  make  paralyzes 
him,  makes  him  weigh  longer  and  longer  the  ob- 
jections which  his  fruitful  imagination  has  to 
offer. 

The  right-minded  child  is  overflowing  with  lov- 
ingness.  He  loves  everyone  and  he  expects  every- 
one to  love  him.  All  trouble  calls  forth  his  sym- 
pathy. He  does  not  stop  to  inquire  whether  the 
sufferer  has  merited  the  suffering  or  not.  It  is 
enough  for  him  that  the  suffering  exists.  If  he 
can,  he  will  alleviate  it.  In  moments  of  anger  he 
may  inflict  pain  upon  his  playmates,  in  moments 
of  thoughtlessness  upon  his  elders.  But  no  sooner 
does  he  realize  the  trouble  that  his  waywardness 
has  caused  than  he  is  filled  with  penitence.  He 
is  burning  with  a  desire  to  make  amends.  That 
it  should  be  his  duty  deliberately  to  cause  suffer- 
ing, this  is  inconceivable  to  the  child. 

To  be  grown  up  means,  among  other  things,  to 
have  acquired  the  power  to  do  hard  things.     The 


96  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

Tommies  do  not  grow  up.  They  make  love  to  the 
Grizels  that  they  may  not  know  the  pain  of  un- 
requited love.  They  make  love  to  the  Lady  Pip- 
pinworths  to   atone   for  having  humiliated  them. 

"  How  we  change !  "  says  Tommy,  musing  pen- 
sively of  his  boyhood.  "  How  we  dinna  change !  " 
growls  Aaron.  And  that  is  the  remarkable  thing 
about  the  Tommies.  It  is  so  difficult  to  change 
them.  Sin  leaves  its  mark  upon  the  rest  of  us. 
We  are  never  quite  the  same  again.  Sometimes 
it  hardens  us,  sometimes  it  wakes  us  up.  The 
Tommies  are  neither  hardened  nor  awakened. 
Why?  Is  it  because,  through  it  all,  they  have 
been  but  children  at  play,  and  have  preserved  the 
purity  and  innocence  of  childhood? 

There  have  been,  there  are,  there  always  will  be 
artists  in  whom  the  man  is  strong  enough  to  keep 
the  child  within  him  in  order.  He  probably  is  the 
greatest  artist,  as  well  as  the  greatest  man,  who 
can  be  at  the  same  time  most  a  man  and  most  a 
child.  But  to  be  an  artist  at  all,  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  that  the  child  be  there.  The  presence 
of  the  man  does  not  seem  to  be  so  essential. 

Society  has  done  well  in  these  latter  days  in 
insisting  that  the  artist  conform  to  the  same  moral 
law  to  which  other  men  are  subject.  Nevertheless 
the  errors  of  genius  have  always  commanded,  and 
will  always  command,  an  undying  sympathy. 
When  the  failings  of  the  Goethes,  the  Shelley s, 
the  Byrons  and  the  Tommies  are  recounted,  we 
echo  Corp's  cry  "Dinna  tell  me  to  think  ill  o'  that 


THE  ARTISTIC  TEMPERAMENT       97 

laddie!"  Is  it  because  we  believe  that  downright 
genius,  like  downright  love,  atones  for  everything? 
Rather  it  is  because  we  feel  that  the  errors  of  gen- 
ius are  those  of  an  impulsive,  generous  nature,  and 
we  prefer  the  generous  sinner  to  the  calculating 
saint. 

Very  early  in  the  story  of  Tommy's  manhood, 
Mr.  Barrie  tells  us  that  he  is  suppressing  a  good 
many  of  the  nice  things  that  Tommy  did,  for  fear 
that  we  might  like  him.  But  we  saw  through 
Mr.  Barrie  all  the  time,  we  knew  that  he  was 
chastising  Tommy  in  order  that  we  might  love 
him  the  more.  And  we  are  sure  that  the  Creator, 
in  dealing  with  the  Tommies,  remembers  that  they 
are  but  children. 


VI 

ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS 

When  we  speak  the  language  to  which  we  have 
always  been  accustomed,  especially  if  that  lan- 
guage happens  to  be  English,  we  often  use  words 
which  conceal  quite  as  much  as  they  reveal  that 
which  we  have  in  mind.  This  practice  of  veiling 
our  thoughts  has  become  so  habitual  with  us  that 
when  we  really  wish  to  express  ourselves  fully  and 
completely,  we  often  cannot  find  the  words,  and 
when  we  do  succeed  in  saying  exactly  what  we 
mean  we  are  sometimes  misunderstood,  for  it  is  as- 
sumed that  we  must  always  mean  something  a  little 
different  from  what  we  say.  But  I  have  a  foreign 
friend  who  in  his  picturesque  English  generally 
manages  to  express  his  meaning  most  forcibly  and 
exactly.  Once  when  I  was  with  this  gentleman, 
I  happened  to  remark  upon  the  fine  appearance 
of  a  young  man  of  our  acquaintance.  He  re- 
plied, "His  outside,  yes,  I  must  say  it  pleases  me 
as  well  as  that  of  any  man  that  I  know.  His  in- 
side, I  have  not  yet  arrived  into  it." 

I  confess  that  I  have  always  thought  arriving 
into  people's  insides  the  most  interesting  thing  in 
life ;  that  I  am  very  fond  of  thinking  over  people's 
excellences    and    deficiencies    and    their    probable 

98 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS       99 

causes,  and  that  I  am  even  sometimes  given  to 
talking  them  over  with  my  friends.  When  I  was 
a  child  this  tendency  was  frowned  upon.  I  was 
told  that  I  must  talk  about  things,  not  about 
people.  Yet  I  noticed  that  the  grown  people  that 
I  knew,  I  believe  because  they  were  thinking,  in- 
teresting, right-minded  human  beings,  generally 
talked  more  about  people  than  they  did  about 
things.  Since  I  have  been  grown  I  have  been  told 
that  if  I  lived  a  broader  life,  if  I  were  not  shut  up 
in  an  institution,  I  would  think  less  about  people, 
more  about  things.  I  can  only  say  that  if  this 
is  really  true,  I  am  glad  that  I  am  shut  up  in  an 
institution.  For  I  believe  that  the  man  who  said 
"The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man,"  had  so 
far  at  least  advanced  to  be  wise,  and  when  our 
greatest  nineteenth  century  poet  told  us  that  little 
else  save  the  development  of  a  soul  is  worth  study, 
I  believe  that  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about. 
Nor  can  we  imagine  Shakespeare,  Thackeray  or 
Dickens  refusing  to  discuss  the  characters  of  others 
in  the  proper  way  and  to  the  proper  persons. 

There  is  just  one  type  of  man  to  whom  it  may 
in  a  sense  be  permitted  to  find  things  more  inter- 
esting than  people,  and  that  is  the  really  great 
student  of  natural  science.  He  is  permitted  to 
be  more  interested  in  the  laws  of  nature  than  in 
man  if  he  must  be,  because  he  may  thus  make  dis- 
coveries that  will  benefit  man.  Yet  even  he,  though 
a  benefactor  of  his  fellows,  pays  a  certain  penalty 
for  his  lack  of  interest  in  his  beneficiaries.     We 


100  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

often  hear  it  said  that  this  is  an  age  in  which  there 
is  a  dearth  of  great  men.  This  is  probably  un- 
true; we  have  the  great  men,  but  they  are  scien- 
tists, so  although  they  are  revolutionizing  all  our 
lives,  we  do  not  fully  recognize  them  as  great. 
They  have  not  the  lively  interest  in  us  human  be- 
ings that  Shakespeare  and  Dante  had,  so  we  have 
not  the  lively  interest  in  them.  To  all  time  we 
shall  be  interested  in  all  the  details  of  Shakes- 
peare's life  that  we  can  get,  but  though  we  all 
profit  by  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  discoveries,  his  biog- 
raphy would  find  comparatively  few  readers,  and 
for  the  most  part  we  no  more  love  him  than  we 
love  the  law  of  gravitation. 

Some  people  seem  to  have  the  impression  that 
it  is  perfectly  legitimate  to  discuss  the  characters 
of  others,  provided  that  we  do  not  know  them,  and 
therefore  perhaps  have  very  little  data  for  dis- 
cussing them.  As  a  teacher  of  Bible  or  of  history 
I  may,  nay  I  must  analyze  the  characters  of  St. 
Peter,  of  St.  Paul,  of  Julius  Caesar,  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  but  how  can  I  understand  those  whom 
I  have  not  seen,  except  as  I  have  some  understand- 
ing of  those  whom  I  have  seen?  As  an  intelligent 
member  of  society,  I  am  also  supposed  to  have  an 
opinion  of  public  measures  and  of  public  men,  but 
how  am  I  to  be  capable  of  forming  an  opinion  of 
them  if  I  do  not  form  opinions  of  the  people  about 
me  and  their  measures?  And  should  the  people 
that  I  read  about  in  the  newspapers  and  their 
deeds  be  more  important  to  me  than  the  people  in 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     101 

my  own  little  life  and  their  deeds?  To  the  world 
they  are  more  important;  to  me  practically  they 
cannot  be,  and  should  not  be.  For  generally  speak- 
ing it  is  by  the  small  affairs  which  touch  me,  by 
the  people  with  whom  I  come  into  personal  contact 
that  I  am  influenced,  and  it  is  upon  these  that  I  ex- 
ert an  influence.  I  cannot  influence  public  affairs, 
except  in  a  very  small  degree  by  forming  an  opin- 
ion about  them,  since  public  opinion  shapes  events, 
and  the  opinion  of  each  individual  is  a  part  of 
public  opinion.  And  as  in  the  case  of  the  great 
men  of  the  past  and  their  measures,  so  in  the  case 
of  the  great  men  of  the  present  and  their  meas- 
ures, I  am  competent  to  form  an  opinion  of  them 
only  as  I  have  trained  my  judgment  by  constantly 
forming  opinions  of  the  people  about  me,  their 
actions  and  their  motives.  Furthermore,  how  can 
I  understand  things,  the  highest  and  best  things, 
the  things  that  my  critics  think  that  I  should  talk 
about,  except  as  I  understand  people?  Natural 
science,  as  has  been  seen,  I  may  perhaps  under- 
stand, while  knowing  very  little  of  the  human 
heart.  But  the  function  of  painting,  poetry  and 
music  is  chiefly  to  express  and  call  forth  human 
emotion:  how  understand  them  except  as  I  under- 
stand human  emotion? 

I  suppose  that  the  idea  that  the  criticism  of 
others  is  wrong  is  founded  upon  the  impression 
that  others  are  necessarily  hurt  by  the  habit  of 
criticism,  perhaps  also  that  we  ourselves  are  hurt 
by   it,  since  we  are  thereby  made  severe  in  our 


102  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

judgments,  possibly  even  severe  to  the  point  of 
cruelty.  There  are  those  who  admit  that  certain 
people  for  certain  reasons  are  justified  in  analyz- 
ing those  with  whom  they  come  in  contact,  but 
they  maintain  that  the  rest  of  us  should  take 
those  whom  we  meet  in  a  happy-go-lucky  fashion, 
admiring  their  virtues  and  closing  our  eyes  to 
their  faults.  Thus  a  friend  writes  me  "Vivisection 
may  be  necessary  and  have  valuable  results,  but  it 
is  not  a  part  of  my  work,"  and  again  "It  is  easy 
to  see  faults,  but  much  more  difficult  to  see  excel- 
lencies. I  prefer  to  exercise  what  skill  I  have  in 
detecting  the  latter."  But  is  analysis  of  char- 
acter equivalent  to  spiritual  vivisection,  which 
keeps  the  victim  writhing  in  agony,  and  perhaps 
makes  the  scientific  observer  callous  and  cold? 
And  does  the  person  who  sees  faults  understand- 
ing^ fail  to  see  virtues?  I  have  had  some  ac- 
quaintance with  a  class  of  people  who  are  most 
rigidly  principled  against  criticising  others. 
They  are  generally  children  of  the  Puritans ;  that 
is,  they  come  of  a  race  that  believes  more  in  self- 
control  than  in  self-development,  and  that  too 
often  mistakes  self-repression  for  self-control. 
Now  I  find  that  on  the  whole  these  people  are  more 
censorious,  and  they  certainly  are  less  interesting 
than  are  those  who  discuss  others  more  freely,  for 
they  understand  life  less,  and  they  themselves  lack 
in  fullness  of  life. 

There   are   three   different   positions   which   we 
take  toward  life   at   different   stages   of  our  ex- 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     103 

istence.     First  as  little  children,  we  are  likely  to 
think  that  everybody  is  good,  and  to  love  every- 
body.    This   position,   alas !  we   cannot  maintain 
long,  life  knocks  it  out  of  us.      So  we  arrive  at  our 
second  position,   in  which  we  divide  people  into 
good  and  bad,  feel  that  we  must  love  and  associate 
with  the  good,  and  avoid  the  bad,  "we  will  not 
speak  of  them,  look  only  and  pass,"  or  perhaps 
not  even  look.     We  may  possibly  labor  for  their 
salvation,  but  with  the  clear  understanding  that 
they  are  quite  different  beings  from  ourselves  and 
our  friends.     This  is  more  or  less  the  position  of 
all  of  us  in  extreme  youth,  and  there  are  those  who 
never  advance  much  beyond  it.      Such  people  natu- 
rally do  not  wish  to  believe  that  some  of  those 
with  whom  they  associate  and  even  love  must  be 
classed  among  bad  people,  and  since  there  is  for 
them  no  middle  ground  the  only  way  to  keep  on 
respecting   their   acquaintances   and  loving  their 
friends  is  to  deny  that  they  have  certain  very  ob- 
vious   faults.     To    admit    that    they    have    these 
faults,  that  there  is  in  their  nature  even  the  root 
of  faults  that  are  commonly  considered  "more  hei- 
nous in  the  sight  of  God  than  are  others,"  and  still 
to  keep  on  associating  with  them  would  seem  to  be 
a  letting  down  of  the  moral  standards.     Thus  my 
neighbor  A,  commenting  upon   a  great,  but  not 
very  obvious  or  technical  dishonesty  on  the  part 
of  a   woman  who  professed  high  principles,  ex- 
claimed, "I  cannot  see  how  any  respectable  person 
could  do  such  a  thing."     I  replied,  "Oh,  I  under- 


104  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

stand,  and  I  even  see  how  she  fails  to  realize  that 
she  is  doing  anything  wrong.  My  friend  B 
could  do  the  same  thing,  and  believe  that  she  was 
doing  right,  for  while  her  moral  sense  is  strong  in 
some  respects,  it  is  not  in  that  respect."  To 
which  A  rejoined,  "I  cannot  but  feel  that  you 
judge  your  friend  too  harshly,  but  if  you  are 
right  in  your  estimate  of  her,  I  do  not  see  how  you 
can  care  for  her."  I  may  be  wrong  in  my  analy- 
sis of  my  friend,  but  I  am  sure  that  I  am  not 
harsh  in  my  attitude  toward  her,  and  whether  my 
judgment  of  her  is  right  or  wrong,  I  am  certainly 
very  fond  of  her. 

When  faults  bear  fruit  in  actual  sin,  the  horror 
of  these  uncritical  people  who  have  refused  to  see 
the  faults  is  unbounded.  For  they  have  not 
watched  the  gradual  development  of  the  sin ;  they 
do  not  understand  how  it  has  sprung  from  a  small 
seed  which  may  be  found  in  all  of  us,  even  in  them- 
selves, only  in  them  perhaps  circumstances  have 
not  favored  its  development,  or  possibly  training 
and  will-power  have  prevented  its  bearing  fruit. 
If  we  take  a  full-grown  villain,  at  a  definite  period 
of  life,  such  as  Shakespeare's  Iago,  he  seems  out- 
side the  pale  of  human  sympathy.  But  in  the 
presence  of  Tito  Melema  we  can  only  "consider 
ourselves,  lest  we  also  be  tempted."  The  differ- 
ence is  that  Iago  is  taken  at  the  point  of  full  de- 
velopment, so  that  we  do  not  recognize  that  we 
have  anything  in  common  with  him,  while  we  see 
Tito's  character  unfolding  from  the  beginning ;  we 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     105 

feel  that  at  almost  any  point,  given  similar  circum- 
stances, we  might  have  done  the  same  thing.  Our 
attitude  toward  Iago  is  like  that  of  a  person  who 
will  not  criticise  others,  which  means  that  he  will 
not  understand  others,  until  suddenly  he  is  brought 
face  to  face  with  some  great  sin,  and  then,  well 
then  he  does  not  understand,  and  his  unqualified 
condemnation  springs  from  the  same  source  as  did 
his  complacent  charity ;  complacent,  I  have  said, 
but  the  complacency  was  with  himself,  the  virtuous 
person  who  never  speaks  evil  of  anyone.  Then 
too  while  such  a  man  does  not  censure  others  in 
words,  he  certainly  makes  the  people  with  whom 
he  associates,  especially  if  they  happen  to  be 
sufficiently  interested  in  humanity  to  talk  about 
it,  feel  that  he  is  censuring  them,  and  censuring 
them  unjustly  and  misunderstandingly,  that  he 
simply  says  "That  is  wrong,"  and  leaves  it  at 
that.  Nor  do  such  people  often  acquire  intimate 
friends,  for  close  friendship  demands  intimate 
knowledge,  and  one  who  will  not  express  his  opin- 
ions, or  perhaps  does  not  even  allow  himself  to 
form  opinions,  cannot  be  intimately  known.  He 
does  not  know  himself,  nor  is  it  possible  for  us  to 
know  him. 

So  much  for  the  second  position.  There  is  a 
third  position  where  one  sees  the  evil,  but  sees  also 
the  good  beneath  the  evil,  and  has  the  clear  faith 
to  believe  that  evil  will  be  overcome  by  good.' 
Some  see  this  by  intuition,  but  generally  it  is  by 
the   constant   practice   of   analysis,   of   criticism, 


106  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

that  we  come  to  reflect  that  there  is  no  fault  that 
has  not  a  virtue  at  its  root,  and  therefore  no  fault, 
unless  perhaps  it  be  deliberate  cruelty,  that  can 
make  a  person  positively  unlovable. 

We  come  to  wonder  even  whether  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  deliberate  cruelty,  whether  what  has 
that  appearance  is  not  generally  unstrung  nerves, 
frequently  caused  by  great  mental  suffering.  I 
find  myself  somewhat  in  sympathy  with  William 
Rufus  because  of  that  blasphemous  sentence  of  his, 
"God  shall  never  find  a  good  man  in  me,  I  have 
suffered  too  much  at  his  hands."  I  recognize  the 
blasphemy,  but  the  suffering  that  called  forth  the 
blasphemy  makes  me  sympathize  with  the  man. 
I  do  not  know  just  what  he  had  suffered,  probably 
whatever  it  was  it  was  mostly  through  his  own 
fault,  but  I  can  fancy  him  driven  almost  insane 
by  the  punishment  that  seemed  greater  than  he 
could  bear,  so  that  scarcely  conscious  of  anything 
save  his  own  blinding,  morally  blinding,  pain,  he 
took  a  fiendish  delight  in  making  others  suffer,  or 
as  he  thought,  in  getting  even  with  God. 

There  was  at  first  nothing  more  shocking  to 
me  than  that  Ibsen's  Hedda  Gabler  should  make 
fun  of  her  aunt's  bonnet,  the  bonnet  which  the 
dear  old  lady  had  bought  in  order  that  her  new 
niece  should  not  be  ashamed  of  her.  But  when 
Hedda  told  the  story  to  Judge  Brock,  and  added 
"You  see  it  just  takes  me  like  that  all  of  a  sudden. 
And  then  I  can't  help  doing  it.  Oh,  I  don't  know 
how  I  am  to  explain  it,"  I  understood,  or  thought 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     107 

that  I  did.  The  thing  that  "took  her  all  of  a 
sudden"  was  the  misery  of  her  own  life,  a  life  en- 
tirely out  of  place,  a  life  which  was  meant  to  con- 
tribute to  the  sum  total  of  beauty  in  the  world, 
and  could  not.  Hedda  could  have  resisted  the 
temptation  to  be  cruel,  we  can  all  resist  temp- 
tation, but  it  would  have  been  very  difficult  for 
her  to  have  done  so,  and  certainly  many  of  us  in 
her  place  would  have  done  as  she  did.  For  some 
of  us,  alas !  can,  by  looking  into  our  own  hearts, 
or  by  recalling  bitter  memories  of  the  past,  under- 
stand that  kind  of  cruelty.  Have  there  not  been 
times  when,  out  of  sorts  with  ourselves  and  our  lot, 
we  have  taken  a  fiendish  delight  in  saying  or  doing 
the  cruel  thing?  have  even  in  a  certain  sense  ex- 
ulted in  the  suffering  that  we  have  caused,  and  all 
perhaps  because  we  were  suffering  such  wild  mis- 
ery ourselves.  Perhaps  they  whom  we  thus 
grieved  are  no  longer  living.  How  we  would  love 
some  assurance  of  pardon  now,  but  while  they  were 
with  us  we  gave  no  sign  of  craving  for  it !  For 
after  all  has  been  said  that  can  be  said  in  ex- 
planation of  it,  intentional  cruelty  must  still  be 
the  worst  of  all  sins,  it  certainly  is  the  sin  for 
which  we  suffer  most  remorse. 

But  while  nothing  can  fully  excuse  this  or  any 
other  sin,  analysis  does  explain,  does  make  the  sin- 
ner, every  sinner,  come  within  the  pale  of  human 
sympathy.  So  we  find  the  analytical  person  at 
bottom  far  kinder  than  the  person  who  refuses  to 
criticise.     For  analysis  is  simply  trying  to  under- 


108  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

stand.  And  when  we  understand  we  must  be 
charitable;  nay,  there  is  no  room  for  charity  in 
the  modern  perverted  sense  of  the  word,  but  only 
for  love.  I  have  a  friend  who,  when  she  sums  up 
the  character  of  another,  bestows  her  highest 
praise  when  she  says,  "She  is  not  easily  shocked." 
And  if  the  not  being  easily  shocked  does  not  mean 
an  absence  of  standards,  but  rather  a  knowledge 
of  human  nature,  an  ability  to  see  not  only  the 
deed,  but  just  what  led  to  it,  then  surely  it  is  de- 
serving of  high  praise.  God  is  never  shocked,  for 
He  knows  all.  That  is  why  we  are  not  ashamed 
to  confess  our  sins  to  God,  for  we  know  that  He 
understands  all,  not  only  what  we  do  and  what  we 
say,  but  the  inmost  thoughts  of  our  hearts,  all  the 
inherited  tendencies,  all  the  temptations  that  come 
from  environment.  So  it  seems  to  me  that  He 
can  hardly  be  said  to  forgive  us,  He  just  under- 
stands us,  and  when  we  really  understand  there  is 
little  room  for  forgiveness ;  sympathy  and  help 
take  its  place.  In  the  presence  of  our  fellowmen 
we  are  ashamed,  for  we  feel  that  there  are  no 
words  by  which  we  can  make  them  fully  under- 
stand. We  can  only  tell  them  part,  nor  can  we 
even  be  sure  as  to  what  we  tell  them  means  to 
them.  For  few  men  have  even  in  small  measure 
that  power  which  He  had  of  whom  it  was  said 
"He  needed  not  that  any  should  testify  to  Him  of 
man,  for  He  Himself  knew  what  was  in  man." 
Yet  the  thoughtful,  analytical  person,  he  who 
knows  others  a  little,  and  his  own  heart  perhaps  a 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     109 

little  more,  does  understand  man  at  least  enough 
to  know  that  no  one  is  absolutely  black  or  ab- 
solutely white.     We  remember  that  hard  saying 
of  the  old-fashioned  theologian  "There  is  enough 
evil  in  the  best  action  of  the  best  man  to  damn 
him."     It  may  be  true,  a  seed  of  evil  in  the  best 
action  of  the  best  man,  which  if  allowed  to  develop, 
would  be  sufficient  to  damn.     But  if  true  the  con- 
verse is  at  least  equally  true,  "There  is  enough  of 
good  in  the  worst  action  of  the  worst  man  to  save 
him,"  a  seed  of  good  which,  if  allowed  to  develop, 
will  be  sufficient  to  save.     And  he  who  has  suffi- 
cient penetration  and  analytical  power  to  see  this 
must  be  an  optimist.     A  friend  of  mine  speaking 
of  a  popular  play  said,  "Its  lesson  seems  to  be 
that  while  society  is  all  wrong,  yet  at  bottom  it  is 
all   right  after  all."     Understood  aright  that  is 
life's  lesson.     That  is  quite  a  different  thing  from 
saying  that  it   is   all  right   to  be  all  wrong;  it 
simply  means   that  underneath  the  all  wrong  is 
something  that  is  all  right,  and  that  will  in  the 
end  get  the  better  of  the  all  wrong.     The  only 
optimism  that  is  of  any  account  is  the  optimism  of 
such  a  man  as  Browning,  who  thoroughly  under- 
stands sin,  has  so  to  speak  penetrated  it,  and  come 
out  on  the  other  side.     The  optimism  of  a  man 
who  does  not  know  sin,  who  shuts  his  eyes  to  the 
truth  is  worthless,  for  it  is  nothing  but  ignorance ; 
but  I  believe  that  when  we  know  sin  intimately,  the 
tendency  of  such  a  knowledge  will  be  not  toward 
pessimism,  but  toward  optimism. 


110  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

Then  if  the  danger  of  thoughtful  criticism  is 
not  that  we  shall  be  cruel  to  others,  does  it  not  lie 
in  the  other  direction?     Should  we  not  be  afraid 
that  we  may  become  too  lenient  to  sin?  that  we 
may  even  come  to  feel  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  sin,  since  a  man  may  do  bad  things  and  not  be 
at  heart  a  bad  man,  and  since  evil  is  after  all  but 
good    in   the   making?     Or   may    we   not   become 
fatalistic,  since  we  see  that  sin  is  so  largely  the 
result   of   heredity  and   environment,   or  even   of 
physical    disease?     I    answer   that   this   habit   of 
mind  will  and  should  make  us  more  lenient  to  sin- 
ners, because  we  come  to  recognize  that  what  in 
the  end  was  a  great  evil  sprang  from  a  small  seed, 
a  seed  which  perhaps  exists  in  each  of  us.     But 
unless  we  are  very  superficial  people,  it  will  tend 
to  make  us  more  careful  rather  than  more  lax  in 
our  own  lives,  for  seeing  from  what  small  begin- 
nings great  evils  flow,  we  will  be  more  careful  to 
check  the  small  beginnings  in  ourselves,  and  so  far 
as  we  may  in  others  for  whom  we  may  be  in  any 
degree  responsible.      Check,  or  direct,  as  may  seem 
best,  for  the  impulses  which  lead  to  evil  are  often 
such   as   properly   directed,   would  lead  to   good. 
As  a  child  I  used  to  think  that  bad  people  meant 
to  be  bad.     Now  I  see  that  probably  no  one  in  the 
beginning  at  least  means  to  be  bad,  we  only  do  not 
mean  to  be  good.     We  do  not  need  to  mean  to  be 
bad,  if  we  only  allow  ourselves  to  drift  we  will  be 
bad,  but  in  order  to  be  good  we  must  mean  to  be 
good.     Hence    we    come    to    understand    as    Mr. 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     111 

Chesterton  says  that  while  we  may  all  ultimately 
be  saved,  it  is  safest  to  live  as  though  we  were  all 
in  danger  of  being  damned.  We  begin  too  to  ap- 
proach God's  position,  and  hate  the  sin  even  in  its 
beginnings,  especially  in  ourselves,  but  love  the 
sinner;  hate  the  sin  because  it  destroys  the  sinner 
whom  we  love.  At  bottom  we  can  have  no  hope 
except  as  we  do  believe  in  the  sinfulness  of  sin. 
For  if  sin  is  inevitable,  the  necessary  result  of 
heredity,  environment  and  physique,  then  there  is 
no  hope ;  we  are  no  more  responsible  for  it  than  we 
are  for  being  short  or  tall,  nor  can  we  change  one 
more  than  the  other.  But  if  sin  is  the  result  of 
the  action  or  lack  of  action  of  the  will,  then  it  is 
possible  to  get  rid  of  it  And  while  we  may  be- 
lieve that  there  is  good  in  everything  and  every- 
body, that  should  not  blind  us  to  the  greater  good 
in  the  better  things  and  the  better  people.  Says 
Ogniben  in  Browning's  "Soul's  Tragedy"  "God 
has  His  archangels  and  consorts  with  them; 
though  he  made  too  and  intimately  sees  what  is 
good  in  the  worm." 

And  then  too  just  as  the  seeing  what  is  good  in 
evil  should  not  make  us  incline  toward  the  evil,  so 
the  seeing  all  sides  of  a  question  should  not  pre- 
vent us  from  taking  sides.  Some  of  the  best 
minds  have  been  ineffectual  because  of  their  very 
breadth  to  which  there  was  no  corresponding 
depth.  Thus  Macaulay  says  of  George  Savile, 
Marquis  of  Halifax,  that  the  historian  must  be 
partial  to  him,  because  he  saw  things  at  the  time 


112  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

as  the  historian  sees  them  after  they  are  over. 
But  Halifax's  own  life  as  a  statesman  was  in  a 
great  measure  a  failure,  and  largely  because  of  this 
very  power,  which  was  not  balanced  by  practical 
common  sense. 

While  it  may  be  admitted  that  this  gift  of  an- 
alysis, of  understanding  the  characters  of  others 
is  in  itself  helpful  and  tends  more  toward  kindness 
than  toward  unkindness,  why  should  I  talk  over 
the  characters  of  others?  My  friend  who  likens 
analysis  to  vivisection,  writes  that  if  she  had  ex- 
traordinary power  to  understand  character,  she 
should  pray  that  she  might  have  the  strength  to 
keep  her  knowledge  to  herself,  so  that  no  one 
should  obtain  any  information  about  the  failures 
of  others  from  her.  Well,  as  I  have  said  before,  I 
believe  that  the  power  of  analysis  helps  me,  helps 
me  to  do  my  daily  work,  to  teach  History  and 
Bible  better,  for  it  is  only  as  I  understand  life  a 
little  in  the  concrete,  that  I  can  in  some  measure 
understand  the  abstract  laws  of  life,  which  our 
Lord  Himself,  the  apostles  and  the  prophets  have 
taught  us.  I  have  spoken  too  of  that  youthful 
position  in  which  we  perhaps  think  that  we  must 
labor  for  the  salvation  of  others  without  under- 
standing their  sin.  To  be  sure  it  is  better  to  fix 
the  mind  upon  what  people  are  to  be  converted  to 
rather  than  upon  what  they  are  to  be  converted 
from,  and  yet  there  are  times  when  a  sympathetic 
understanding  of  the  latter  is  also  desirable. 
"Priests  should  study  passion ;  how  else  help  man- 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     113 

kind  who  come  for  help  in  passionate  extremes?" 
So  those  who  would  help  themselves  and  others  to 
correct  faults  should  study  faults.  And  just  as 
I  cannot  understand  or  help  others  except  as  I 
understand  myself,  so  I  cannot  understand  or  help 
myself  except  as  I  understand  others.  Therefore 
it  is  important  that  I  should  not  only  retain  what 
power  of  analysis  I  have,  but  that  I  should  let  it 
grow,  and  both  retention  and  growth  are  depend- 
ent upon  expression.  Moreover  if  I  am  to  come 
into  any  close  touch  with  my  friends  I  must  know 
what  they  think,  and  they  must  know  what  I  think 
about  people  and  things,  for  we  know  each  other 
chiefly  as  we  know  each  other's  opinions  of  life, 
and  our  opinions  of  life  can  generally  be  best 
gathered  from  our  opinions  of  lives. 

Nevertheless  there  are  some  rules  to  be  adhered 
to  in  the  exercise  of  criticism  which  may  all  be 
summed  up  in  one,  to  wit,  never  criticise  in  such  a 
way  as  to  hurt  anyone,  except  of  course  when  for 
some  real  good  it  is  necessary  to  hurt.  There 
may  be  times  when  it  is  best  to  criticise  a  person 
to  his  face  in  such  a  way  as  to  hurt.  There  may 
also  be  times  when  it  is  best  to  criticise  a  person 
to  someone  else  in  order  to  prevent  his  getting  an 
appointment  which  he  is  not  fitted  to  fill,  but  to 
fail  to  secure  such  a  post  will  not  really  hurt  him. 
And  there  may  be  other  ways  in  which  it  is  some- 
times justifiable  to  speak  of  a  person's  faults  or 
deficiencies  in  such  a  way  as  will  hurt.  But  in 
general  I  think  that  I  should  never  criticise  a  fel- 


114  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

low-being  in  such  a  way  as  will  hurt  him  or  hurt 
me,  for  unkindly  criticism  hurts  the  critic  far 
more  than  it  hurts  the  person  criticised.  And  I 
find  that  in  order  to  obey  this  rule,  I  must  obey 
at  least  two  other  rules.  First,  Never  analyze 
anyone's  character  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  do 
not  know  human  nature  well  enough  to  under- 
stand. My  neighbor  A  was  right  in  objecting 
to  my  exposure  of  my  friend  B's  weakness.  I 
should  not  have  mentioned  it  to  her,  for  she  was 
not  able  to  understand,  and  I  knew  her  well 
enough  to  know  that  she  would  not  be  able  to  un- 
derstand. It  is  only  when  we  can  think  out  the 
faults  and  deficiencies  of  a  mutual  acquaintance 
together,  sympathize  because  we  understand,  and 
because  we  understand  one  human  being  better, 
understand  life  better,  that  such  discussion  can  do 
good.  I  have  been  asked  how  I  would  feel  if  I 
knew  that  two  of  my  friends  were  in  the  habit  of 
discussing  my  character.  I  answer  that  I  hope 
that  my  friends  are  sufficiently  interested  in  me 
to  discuss  my  character,  and  I  know  that  if  they 
are  really  my  friends  such  discussion  will  do  me  no 
harm.  Either  in  talking  me  over  they  will  decide 
that  certain  faults  which  one  or  both  of  them  had 
attributed  to  me  are  not  there,  or  if  they  are  there 
they  will  find  an  explanation  for  them  which  will 
partially  excuse ;  or  if  no  explanation  can  be 
found,  they  will  love  me  just  the  same. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  other  rule  which  I  find 
it  necessary  to  follow,  namely,  not  to  talk  over  the 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     115 

faults  of  anyone,  if  these  faults  awaken  dislike 
in  me,  unless  indeed  it  is  with  a  person  who  can 
cure  me  of  this  dislike  by  making  me  understand. 
For  generally  speaking  talking  over  that  which 
we  dislike  strengthens  the  dislike,  thereby  hurting 
us  and  perhaps  also  hurting  the  person  under  dis- 
cussion. Moreover  we  can  hardly  be  fair  to  that 
which  we  really  dislike,  "He  that  is  spiritual  judg- 
eth  all  things,"  and  by  "  he  who  is  spiritual"  I 
think  is  meant  he  who  really  thinks  about  the 
things  that  concern  humanity,  for  no  one  can  think 
on  these  topics  and  not  be  spiritual.  But  yet 
there  is  a  "more  excellent  way,"  the  way  that  is  set 
forth  in  that  wonderful  analysis  of  the  "love  that 
suffereth  long  and  is  kind,"  of  the  "love  that 
thinketh  no  evil."  And  it  is  perfectly  true  that 
the  person  who  has  the  best  intellectual  under- 
standing of  people  is  not  always  the  person  who 
has  the  best  practical  understanding  of  them, 
knows  best  how  to  get  on  with  them,  because  some- 
times the  interest  is  purely  intellectual,  there  is 
no  heart  interest,  we  judge  but  not  in  that  more 
excellent  way  of  which  the  apostle  writes. 

I  find  it  tolerably  easy  to  understand  and 
sympathize  with  the  excesses  of  humanity,  for 
these  are  so  often  but  the  perversions  of  a  great 
nature,  but  it  is  more  difficult  for  me  to  sympa- 
thize with  the  deficiencies  of  human  nature,  and 
especially  with  what  would  perhaps  hardly  seem 
a  fault  at  all,  just  a  lack  of  aspiration,  a  too  great 
contentment  not  with  one's  outer  estate,  but  with 


116  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

one's  mental  and  spiritual  condition.  Here  again 
the  foreign  friend  of  whom  I  spoke  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  essay  said  what  seemed  to  me  a  wise 
thing.  We  were  discussing  some  mutual  acquaint- 
ances who  were  probably  useful  in  a  small  sphere, 
good  moral  people  certainly,  but  people  who  had 
very  little  horizon,  who  saw  very  little  beyond  their 
everyday  life.  He  made  the  remark,  "What  I  do 
not  like  about  them  is  that  they  are  so  happy." 
I  reminded  him  that  he  had  lately  expressed  ad- 
miration for  certain  other  acquaintances,  for  the 
very  reason  that  they  were  happy.  He  replied, 
"It  is  one  thing  to  diffuse  an  atmosphere  of  happi- 
ness, another  thing  to  be  so  damned  happy  your- 
self." As  I  thought  it  over  it  seemed  to  me  that 
he  had  defined  the  case  accurately,  had  used  ex- 
actly the  right  adjective.  Those  who  are  happy 
in  the  sense  of  being  without  aspiration  are  liter- 
ally damned,  that  is  condemned  not  to  grow.  For 
it  is  only  those  who  hunger  and  thirst  who  shall  be 
filled.  It  is  only  the  "crop-fed  bird  and  the  maw- 
crammed  beast"  whom  care  does  not  irk,  and  whom 
doubt  does  not  fret.  "A  man's  reach  must  exceed 
his  grasp." 

But  if  I  condemn  these  people,  it  is  perhaps  be- 
cause I  do  not  criticise  or  analyze,  I  only  condemn ; 
for  it  is  easy  to  analyze  an  excess,  difficult  to 
analyze  a  deficiency ;  something  is  not  there  that 
should  be,  that  is  all.  Yet  perhaps  as  certain 
faults  are  only  surface-deep,  so  certain  seeming 
deficiencies   may   be   only    surface-deep.     Do   not 


ON  THE  CRITICISM  OF  OTHERS     117 

people  sometimes  seem  lacking  in  aspiration  be- 
cause  too   timid  to   give  expression  to  their  as- 
pirations?    Perhaps   too  the  fault  is   in  myself, 
perhaps  my  attitude  toward  them  is  over-bearing 
and  censorious,  so  they  feel  that  they  must  hide 
their  real  selves  from  me.     I  have  not  the  power 
to  draw  them  out.     And  even  granted  that  they 
are  as  deficient  as  I  suppose  them  to  be,  as  I  am 
tolerant  of  spiritual  people  who  are  not  always 
moral,  cannot  I  be  tolerant  of  moral  people  who 
are  not  always   spiritual?     At  any  rate  we  can 
love  all  our  neighbors  in  the  way  in  which  Christ 
commanded  us  to  love  them,  "as  ourselves."     Not 
as  we  love  our  friends,  that  would  be  impossible, 
but  as  we  love  ourselves.     Love  for  our  friends  in- 
cludes   an    emotional    element    which    cannot    be 
forced,  it  goes  like  the  wind  where  it  listeth.     But 
love  for  ourselves  consists  in  seeking  our  own  best 
interests,  and  in  that  way,  we  can  love  everyone. 
Arnold  of  Rugby  tells  us  that  he  had  a  sister 
who  early  formed  a  resolution  never  to  talk  about 
herself,  and  to  this  resolution  she  adhered  during 
the  whole  of  her  life.     I  cannot  say  that  such  a 
determination,   taken  literally,  appears  to  me  to 
be   praiseworthy.     People  who  never   talk   about 
themselves   are  likely  to  be  uninteresting,  for  if 
we  are  attracted  by  them  what  we  want  to  know 
is  their  real  selves.     It  is  true  of  those  who  never 
talk  about  themselves  to  an  even  greater  degree 
than  it  is  true  of  those  who  never  talk  about  others 
that  they  do  not  make  close  friends,  although  when 


118  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

there  is  great  beauty  of  character,  they  may  com- 
mand a  certain  reverent  affection.  Mr.  Howells 
tells  us  that  Longfellow  had  too  little  egotism  to 
form  intimate  friendships.  Just  as  there  are  peo- 
ple who  resolve  not  to  talk  about  themselves,  so 
there  are  people  who  resolve  not  to  talk  about 
others.  Both  resolutions  are  mistaken.  The 
ideal  is  not  to  refrain  from  talking  about  either 
ourselves  or  others,  but  to  know  to  whom  to  talk 
and  how  to  talk.  Of  course  there  is  a  temptation 
to  talk  to  the  wrong  person  and  in  the  wrong  way, 
and  perhaps  this  temptation  or  at  least  the  latter 
half  of  it,  comes  with  peculiar  force  to  those  of 
us  who  follow  the  profession  of  teaching.  It  is 
part  of  our  business  to  criticise,  and  it  is  easy 
to  fall  into  the  habit  of  criticising  unwisely  and 
unkindly.  So  we  need  to  pray  with  Charles  Wes- 
ley 

"  Preserve   me    from   my   calling's   snare." 

And  in  all  our  criticism  we  must  with  Oliver  Crom- 
well "have  the  grace  to  believe  that  we  may  be 
mistaken." 


VII 

THE  FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT 

I  find  that  the  great  joy  in  an  illness  such  as 
I  am  having  this  summer  is  that  it  furnishes  a 
time  in  which,  being  released  from  the  practical 
duties  of  life,  I  can  give  myself  wholly  to  loving. 
Whether  awake  or  asleep,  or  in  that  delightful 
state  between  waking  and  sleeping,  those  whom  I 
love  are  always  present  with  me.  In  my  waking 
hours  I  do  not  so  much  think  happy  thoughts 
about  my  dear  ones  as  lose  myself  in  that  blissful 
revery  which  is  to  thought  what  thought  is  to 
action,  in  which  their  spirits  seem  to  commune  with 
my  spirit,  so  that  although  I  lie  awake  at  night 
I  do  not  suffer  from  it,  because  I  am  so  happy. 
When  I  sleep  I  am  not  conscious  of  dreaming,  yet 
when  I  awake  it  is  with  the  feeling  that  I  have  been 
even  happier  in  sleep  than  I  am  in  my  waking 
hours,  because  still  nearer  to  loved  ones.  When  I 
first  open  my  eyes  I  have  almost  the  physical  sen- 
sation of  holding  the  hand  of  one  or  another 
friend,  generally  someone  whom  I  know  to  be 
thousands  of  miles  away.  This  added  happiness 
I  carry  with  me  through  the  day,  for  they  who 
have  been  with  me  sleeping  do  not  leave  me  wak- 
ing. And  I  wonder  whether  it  was  after  an  ex- 
119 


120  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

perience  such  as  this  that  the  Psalmist  wrote,  "I 
remember  thee  upon  my  bed,  and  meditate  on  Thee 
in  the  night-watches,"  and  again  "When  I  awake, 
I  am  still  with  Thee."  Thus  my  thoughts  pass 
from  the  human  and  finite  to  the  Divine  and  In- 
finite, and  I  wonder  to  what  extent  the  heavenly 
love  can  be  like  the  earthly,  how  far  we  can  really 
set  our  hearts,  our  beating,  throbbing  hearts,  our 
whole  passion  of  loving  upon  that  which  is  in 
Heaven. 

I  once  heard  a  young  wife  say,  "How  can  I  be 
expected  to  love  God  more  than  I  love  my  husband 
and  children  ?"  I  replied,  "Oh,  it  is  a  different  kind 
of  love  that  you  give  to  God  from  that  which  you 
give  to  your  husband  and  children.  Ask  your- 
self whether  you  would  prefer  that  God  should  not 
exist  than  that  you  should  lose  your  husband  and 
children?  That  is  the  real  test."  I  knew  of  a 
boy  who  wished  to  connect  himself  with  a  church. 
A  good  man  who  was  interested  in  him  talked  to 
him  about  the  obligation  that  one  who  was  about 
to  take  such  a  step  was  under  to  love  God.  A 
woman  whom  I  thought  wise,  overheard  the  con- 
versation and  objected  to  it.  "See  here,"  she  said 
to  the  man,  when  she  could  get  him  alone,  "that 
boy  has  not  yet  learned  to  love  anyone.  He  does 
not  know  what  love  is.  Never  in  his  life  has  he 
really  loved  a  human  being,  and  if  a  man  love  not 
his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love 
God  whom  he  has  not  seen?  To  tell  him  that  it 
is  his  duty  to  love  God  will,  if  it  has  any  effect  at 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        121 

all  upon  him,  simply  make  him  sentimental  and  in- 
sincere.    Most   of  the  talk   about  loving  God  is 
cant,  it  is  only  richly  gifted  people  who  can  really 
love  God  in  any  personal  way.     But  the  boy  does, 
so  far  as  he  understands  life  and  himself,  mean 
to  do  right.     To  come  into  the  communion  of  the 
church,  to  be  associated  with  others  who  mean  to 
do  right,  will  strengthen  that  purpose.      So  it  is 
well  that  he  should  be  a  member  of  the  church." 
We  have  heard  too  the  story  of  the  great  liter- 
ary man  and  idealist  who  fell  in  love  with  a  beau- 
tiful girl  who   returned  his   love,  but  would  not 
marry  him  unless  he  could  say  that  he  loved  God 
more    than   he   loved   her.     He   thought   that   he 
could  not  say  that,  so  there  was  no  marriage,  and 
shortly  afterward  the  girl  died,  her  death  perhaps 
hastened  by  the  strain  to  which  she  had  been  sub- 
jected.    I  have  always  thought  that  Mr.  Ruskin's 
unwillingness  to  say  that  he  loved  God  more  than 
he  loved  his  earthly  love  was  a  proof  that  he  did 
thus  love  Him.     For  if  he  did  not  love  the  right- 
eousness which  God  represents,  and  which  God  re- 
quires more  than  he  loved  the  girl,  why  should  he 
have  hesitated  to  tell  a  falsehood  and  say  that  he 
loved  God  more  than  he  loved  her?     So  far  as  we 
can  see  no  person  would  have  been  hurt  by  this, 
only  the  ideal  of  truth  which  is  part  of  God.     But 
he  preferred  to  lose  her  whom  his  soul  loved  rather 
than  sin  against  that  ideal.     It  has  always  seemed 
to  me  that  the  sacrifice  was  needless,  for  the  fact 
that  love  for  her  could  not  make  him  do  what  he 


122  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

believed  to  be  sinning  against  God  proved  that  he 
did  love  God  more  than  he  loved  her,  only  in  a 
different  way.  "What  doth  the  Lord  require  of 
thee  but  to  do  justice  and  to  love  mercy  and  to 
walk  humbly  with  thy  God?"  "Pure  religion  and 
undefiled  before  God  and  the  Father  is  this,  to 
visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  affliction, 
and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world." 
Perhaps  this  is  the  nearest  that  most  of  us  who 
"have  not  seen  God  at  any  time"  can  get  to  loving 
Him,  and  therefore  it  is  al]  that  can  be  required. 
So  I  reasoned  with  myself  until  very  lately. 
Then  I  began  to  consider  the  commandment, 
"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  with  all  thy  soul,  with  all  thy  mind,  and 
with  all  thy  strength."  To  love  God  with  all  the 
soul  means  to  love  Him  with  all  the  aspiration 
after  Truth,  after  Beauty,  after  Righteousness  of 
which  our  nature  is  capable ;  to  love  Him  with  all 
the  strength  is  the  same  thing  as  to  love  Him  with 
all  the  will,  that  is,  not  to  be  content  with  a  raptur- 
ous contemplation  of  the  beauty  of  holiness,  but  to 
make  every  effort  to  realize  in  ourselves  the  right- 
eousness of  holiness,  to  give  expression  to  our  im- 
pression by  becoming  what  we  adore,  thus  making 
the  ideal  the  real.  To  love  Him  with  all  the  mind, 
that  surely  means  that  it  is  our  duty  not  only  to 
do  what  is  right,  but  to  find  out  what  is  right,  to 
seek  after  righteousness  with  the  same  passion  with 
which  the  scientist  seeks  after  truth,  and  the  artist 
seeks  after  beauty,  and  thus  to  attain  not  only 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        123 

self-control,  but  also  self-development.     But  what 
of  loving  Him  with  all  the  heart?     Is  it  not  to  feel 
as  Mary  did  when  she  brought  the  box  of  oint- 
ment, very  precious,  and  anointed  the  God-Man's 
feet?     And  the  story  seems  to  indicate  that  that 
lavish  offering  of  real  heart-affection  pleased  the 
Master  more  than  anything  else  that  was   done 
for    Him    during   his    whole   earthly    pilgrimage. 
Hence  I  conclude  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  love 
that  can  be  given  to  God,  first  that  which  Ruskin 
did  give  to  Him,  harmony  with  His  ideals  in  so 
far  as  he  understood  them,  and  obedience  to  His 
will.     But  on  the  other  hand  Ruskin  was  right 
when  he  said  that  he  did  not  love  God  as  he  should ; 
the  emotional  love  which  he  gave  to  the  creature 
he  could  not  give  to  the  Creator,  and  God  wants 
that   too.     Perhaps   just    as    the   earthly   parent 
craves  the  child's  love  more  than  his  mere  obedi- 
ence, so  from  the  very  heart  of  God  the  request 
comes  to  each  one  of  us  "My  child,  give  me  thy 
heart."     For   God  loves    us ;   cold   obedience   can 
only  wound  the  heart  that  loves ;  what  it  seeks  is 
fellowship,  and  fellowship  comes  only  from  a  union 
of  hearts. 

And  yet  is  it  just  to  command  us  to  love  the 
Lord  our  God  with  all  our  heart?  can  such  love  be 
regarded  as  a  duty?  It  is  our  duty  to  do  only 
that  which  we  can  do,  that  which  by  an  effort  of 
the  will  we  can  make  ourselves  do.  It  is  easy  to 
see  that  it  is  our  duty  to  love  the  Lord  our  God 
with  all  our  strength,  to  will  what  He  wills,  to  seek 


1U  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

to  accomplish  what  He  is  seeking  to  accomplish, 
and  the  will  can  force  the  mind  to  do  its  part,  and 
perhaps  even  can  force  the  soul.  But  can  the 
will  force  the  heart?  In  our  human  relations  it 
cannot;  love  is  like  the  wind,  which  blows  where  it 
listeth;  we  are  not  able  to  love  because  it  is  de- 
sirable to  do  so,  or  because  the  person  is  worthy. 
Personal  love  for  a  friend  is  a  gift,  and  personal 
love  for  God,  the  power  to  talk  face  to  face  with 
God  as  a  man  talketh  with  his  friend,  is  also  a 
gift.  Such  love  is  given  only  to  one  who  already 
has  a  rich  emotional  nature,  but  the  rich  emo- 
tional nature  is  itself  a  gift.  Such  love  is  the 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  those  whom  their 
fellow-Christians  have  recognized  as  saints,  but 
the  saint's  temperament  is  at  bottom  very  simi- 
lar to  that  of  the  artist,  only  expressing  itself  in 
a  different  way.  That  which  the  artist  puts  into 
art,  the  saint  puts  into  love.  Love  then  is  given 
to  the  saint  as  art  is  given  to  the  artist.  Nor 
should  it  surprise  us  that  many  of  the  saints  of 
old  have  been  great  sinners  before  they  became 
great  saints,  for  the  emotional  nature  that  is 
capable  of  the  greatest  heights  is  also  capable  of 
the  lowest  depths.  And  if  God  and  the  devil  be 
represented  as  fighting  over  a  soul,  the  fight  will 
be  hardest  for  the  soul  that  is  of  greatest  worth. 
Still  while  emotional  love  whether  for  God  or 
man  is  a  gift,  we  all  feel  that  there  is  something 
lacking  in  a  nature  that  does  not  possess  it ;  there- 
fore,  it   seems   natural   that   God  should   require 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        125 

it  of  us,  since  He  requires  perfection  of  us,  and 
somehow,  though  we  cannot  reason  it  out,  it  seems 
right  that  He  should.  Perhaps  the  justice  lies 
in  the  fact  that  while  this  heart  love  is  a  gift,  it 
is  a  gift  that  will  always  be  given  to  us  if  we  do 
our  part.  And  our  part  is  not  to  try  to  induce 
emotion,  manufactured  emotion  is  always  an  en- 
emy to  real  love,  but  to  love  in  the  ways  in  which 
we  can,  with  the  strength,  with  the  mind,  and  with 
the  soul,  and  if  the  other  love  which  I  begin  to  see 
is  higher  and  better  is  not  given  to  us  in  this  life, 
it  will  be  given  to  us  in  that  which  is  to  come.  "If 
ye  love  me,"  Jesus  said,  "keep  my  command- 
ments." Would  He  not  also  have  said,  "If  ye 
keep  my  commandments,  ye  will  love  me"? 

Probably  most  of  us  get  a  little  foretaste  even 
in  this  life  of  what  this  highest  love  is.  Some- 
times with  the  consciousness  of  sin  there  is  vouch- 
safed to  us  a  vision  of  Him  whom  we  have  pierced, 
and  then  "we  needs  must  love  the  highest  when 
we  see  it."  Perhaps  this  love  is  given  to  us  in 
times  of  sorrow,  sorrow  which  presses  us  down 
so  that  we  feel  the  everlasting  arms  which  are  un- 
derneath. For  as  suffering  is  the  true  cement  of 
love  between  man  and  man,  so  it  is  also  the  true 
cement  of  love  between  man  and  God.  God  draws 
near  to  us,  and  shares  the  suffering  with  us.  Or 
it  may  be  given  in  times  of  joy,  for  if  He  enters 
into  our  sorrow,  He  enters  equally  into  our  joy. 
If  it  be  true  that  for  men  to  love  each  other  they 
must  have  shed  tears  together,  I  think  that  the 


126  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

tears  must  be  not  only  tears  of  sorrow,  but  also 
tears  of  joy.  Sometimes  it  comes  to  us  when  a 
new  friendship  comes  into  our  lives,  for  human 
love  is  often  the  shortest  way  to  the  Divine. 
Most  of  us  have  at  least  a  fleeting  vision  of  it  as 
we  celebrate  the  Feast  of  Love,  that  service  which 
all  Christians  recognize  as  the  highest  symbol  of 
our  union  and  communion  with  the  Divine.  To 
our  fathers  the  Eucharist  was  more  than  a  sym- 
bol, it  was  the  actual  realization  of  the  fact  that 
their  fellowship  was  in  Heaven.  In  it  Jesus  Him- 
self drew  near  to  them,  His  strength  descended 
upon  them,  their  hearts  warmed  within  them  as 
they  cried,  "Abide  with  us,  Lord,  at  least  we  can- 
not let  Thee  go  except  Thou  bless  us."  And 
often  their  prayer  was  granted,  He  did  not  go, 
He  stayed  to  bless.  If  we  could  approach  it  in 
the  same  spirit,  would  we,  too,  receive  what  they 
received  ? 

Whether  we  attain  unto  this  love  of  God  or 
not,  I  cannot  imagine  that  there  is  any  human 
being  who  does  not  at  times  feel  the  need  of  it. 
For  the  mind  cries  out  for  the  Absolute,  the  heart 
cries  out  for  the  Infinite,  the  soul  cries  out  for 
the  Divine,  the  whole  being  cries  out  for  God. 
The  practical  man  needs  Him  to  put  a  touch  of 
idealism  into  his  life,  the  thinker  needs  Him  to 
put  certainty  into  his.  There  are  times  when  we 
all  yearn  to  give  ourselves  completely  to  someone 
whom  we  can  adore,  with  whom  we  can  be  our  best 
selves,   who    can   understand  those   vague   yearn- 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        127 

ings  which  we  do  not  ourselves  understand,  those 
incommunicable  and  intransmissible  feelings  which 
scarcely  reach  the  surface  of  our  consciousness. 
God  knows  about  them,  but  we  do  not,  we  only 
vaguely  feel  them.  Is  not  this  very  longing 
God's  pleading  with  us  to  accept  His  gift,  the 
gift  of  love  for  Him  to  correspond  to  His  love 
for  us?  Is  it  not  His  voice  saying  to  us,  "Come 
unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden, 
and  I  will  give  you  rest."  Rest  from  what? 
Rest  from  the  vain  struggle  to  be  ourselves,  for 
in  Him  we  find  ourselves,  in  Him  we  are  complete. 
But  we  quench  the  Spirit,  we  shake  off  our  rev- 
erie, and  so  perhaps  to  the  end  of  life  these  occa- 
sional moments  of  Divine  homesickness  are  all 
that  we  know  of  the  real  love  of  God. 

For  friendship  with  God  takes  time,  just  as 
human  friendship  takes  time.  I  must  take  time 
to  get  acquainted  with  my  friend,  so  I  must  take 
time  to  get  acquainted  with  God.  When  I  was  a 
child  I  was  taught  the  best  way  to  get  acquainted 
with  Him  was  through  the  revelation  which  He 
has  made  of  Himself  in  Jesus.  Lately  I  have  come 
to  realize  this  a  little  for  myself,  and  the  realiza- 
tion of  old  things  makes  them  seem  new.  I  have 
a  colleague  who  says  that  I  know  her  pretty  well, 
but  I  do  not  know  much  about  her.  If  I  know 
her  it  is  because  we  have  spent  considerable  time 
together ;  she  has  not  told  me  much  about  her  life 
before  we  met,  there  are  many  things  even  in  her 
present  life  which  I  do  not  know,  but  we  live  to- 


128  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

gether,  I  see  how  she  lives,  and  sometimes  she 
talks  to  me  about  the  things  for  which  she  cares. 
And  I  listen  and  ponder  over  what  she  says,  not 
so  much  because  of  interest  in  the  thing  itself, 
although  that  is  always  interesting,  but  in  order 
that  I  may  know  and  understand  her.  So  I  know 
her  without  knowing  much  about  her.  I  have 
always  been  familiar  with  the  New  Testament ;  as 
a  child  I  studied  it  carefully  in  order  that  I  might 
know  about  Jesus.  But  of  late  I  have  studied 
it  not  so  much  that  I  might  know  about  Jesus, 
but  that  I  might  know  Jesus  Himself.  Indeed, 
when  I  stop  to  think  about  it,  it  is  wonderful  how 
little  the  New  Testament  tells  us  about  Him ;  I 
conclude,  therefore,  that  it  is  not  necessary  to 
know  much  about  Him.  After  all,  I  know  very 
little  about  anyone,  there  is  no  one  of  whom  I 
could  write  a  satisfactory  biography,  and  yet 
there  are  many  people  whom  I  know.  Perhaps 
even  the  apostles  did  not  know  much  about  Jesus, 
but  they  knew  Him,  and  they  strove  to  make  us 
know  Him  as  they  knew  Him.  For  it  comes  to 
me  now  that  He  is  the  important  Fact ;  not  even 
His  teaching  is  of  supreme  importance  except  as 
it  helps  us  to  know  Him.  For  it  is  not  His  teach- 
ing but  He  Himself  who  of  God  is  made  unto  us 
wisdom  and  righteousness  and  sanctification  and 
redemption.  He  Himself,  not  His  teaching,  is 
the  Way  by  which  we  come  to  God.  So  while 
others  have  been  willing  that  we  should  forget 
them  so  long   as   we   remembered   their  teaching, 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        129 

He  wishes  us  to  remember  Him.  "This  do  in  re- 
membrance of  Me."  For  He  was  the  only  teacher 
who  did  not  have  to  be  ashamed  of  His  life  in 
comparison  with  what  He  taught.  So  we  must 
take  time  to  know  Him,  and  knowing  Him  we 
know  the  Father  also.  For  the  new  thing  that 
He  brought  into  the  world  was  that  feeling  of 
vital  union  with  the  Father,  so  that  to  be  one 
with  Him  is  also  to  be  one  with  the  Father,  for 
to  know  Jesus  Christ  is  to  know  the  only  true 
God. 

When  we  really  love  God  with  the  heart,  that 
is,  when  He  becomes  a  Person  to  us,  there  arises 
within  us  a  great  longing  to  pray,  to  enter  into 
direct  communication  with  Him  as  we  are  in  di- 
rect communication  with  our  earthly  friends. 
For  to  pray  is  to  talk  with  God,  to  lift  up  our 
hearts  to  Him  in  order  that  His  heart  may  come 
down  to  us.  As  children  we  were  taught  to  ask 
God  for  all  that  we  wished.  But  most  of  us  have 
a  period  in  which  we  give  up  the  habit,  if  indeed 
it  is  only  a  habit.  We  may  give  it  up  because 
we  are  indifferent,  or  because  life  becomes  too 
material.  Or  perhaps  we  take  the  position  of  a 
little  girl  whom  I  knew,  who  having  prayed  for 
fine  weather  in  order  that  she  might  go  on  an  ex- 
cursion, when  the  day  dawned  rainy,  remarked, 
"I  am  going  to  throw  God  away,  and  get  another 
God."  Or  it  may  be  that  there  is  a  time  of  in- 
formal prayer  which  is  not  at  all  lacking  in  spir- 
ituality,   in    which    loving    God    with    the    soul, 


130  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

though  not  with  the  heart,  is  ver}'  strong.  In- 
deed, I  have  had  seasons  in  which  formless  prayer, 
no  kneeling,  no  words,  just  an  inarticulate  as- 
piration for  what  is  Above  and  Beyond,  has 
seemed  much  more  spiritual  than  any  petition  in 
the  kneeling  posture.  For  it  was  so  unnecessary 
to  ask  God  for  anything  since  He  knew  all  about 
it  anyhow.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  we 
were  taught  to  ask  for  things  simply  because  we 
are  so  crude,  that  except  as  we  ask  for  definite 
things,  we  should  have  no  communication  with 
Him  at  all,  but  when  we  really  establish  com- 
munion with  Him,  we  cease  to  ask  for  things,  that 
crude  praying  has  performed  its  mission.  What 
should  we  think  of  the  child  who  each  day  kept 
asking  its  parents  for  the  same  thing?  Would 
it  not  be  the  height  of  impertinence?  The  child 
asks  once,  because  if  he  did  not,  the  parents 
would  perhaps  not  know  what  it  was  that  he 
wanted.  But  if  the  parent  says,  "I  will  see  about 
it,"  the  well-trained  child  does  not  ask  again,  he 
awaits  the  parent's  pleasure.  Now  God  prac- 
tically says,  "I  will  see  about  it" ;  if  we  carry  out 
the  analogy  of  the  child,  the  request  should  not 
be  repeated.  But  why  should  it  be  made  even 
once?  Does  not  our  Father  know  all  that  we 
have  need  of  before  we  ask  Him?  True,  our 
Lord  continued  all  night  in  prayer  to  God. 
But  was  He  asking  for  things?  Was  He  not 
rather  just  casting  Himself  upon  His  Father's 
love,    feeling   that    the   Father   was    there?     Has 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        131 

not  He  Himself  told  us  that  "In  that  day  ye  shall 
ask  me  nothing?" 

All    this    seems    to    me    good    reasoning,    yet 
perhaps  because  the  heart  is  not  a  reasoner,  when 
we  really  begin  to  love  God  with  the  heart,  we 
frequently  go  back  to  the  mode  of  prayer  of  child- 
hood, we  ask  Him  for  what  we  want.     It  is  true 
that  we  do  not  ask  so  much  for  things  material 
and  tangible   as   we  did  when  we  were  younger, 
but  then  when  we  come  to  love  God  with  the  heart' 
we  do  not  want  material  and  tangible  things  as 
we  did  before.     In  the  form  of  prayer  which  our 
Lord  taught  us,  there  is  one  petition  for  mate- 
rial blessing,  five  for  spiritual  blessings.      Some- 
times when  we  do  want  tangible  things  we  fear 
and  rightly  fear  to  ask  for  them,  lest  the  very 
asking    should    make    us    want    them    too    much. 
Thus  I  have  a  friend  to  whose  lot  it  fell  to  take 
care   of    a   very   sick   sister.     The   sick   woman's 
husband  asked  her  to  join  him  in  prayer  for  her 
recovery.     She  replied,  "I  cannot  do  that,  because 
I  need  all  my  strength  to  take  care  of  her.     When 
I  pray  for  a  thing  I  come  to  want  it  so  much  that 
it  takes  all  my  strength.     And  in  the  present  case 
prayer  is  quite  unnecessary,  God  loves  her  and  He 
loves  us,  He  knows  all  about  it,  and  He  will  do 
what  is  best  for  us  all."     I  thought  that  my  friend 
was  right  for  herself,  but  she  was  right  because 
for  one  of  her  temperament,  prayer  for  her  sis- 
ter's  recovery  would  not  have  been  real  prayer. 
For  the  desire  of  the  troubled  heart  to  influence 


132  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

the  will  of  God  to  its  own  advantage,  perhaps 
even  to  break  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect,  is  not 
prayer.  We  do  not  enter  into  real  communion 
with  God  through  it,  any  more  than  the  mother  of 
the  condemned  criminal,  begging  for  pardon,  en- 
ters thereby  into  communion  with  the  governor. 
Prayer  is  union  and  communion  of  hearts  and 
wills.  So  when  we  really  pray  for  a  sick  friend, 
we  do  not  so  much  ask  for  his  recovery,  whatever 
the  words  may  be,  as  we  take  our  Father  into  our 
anxiety  and  sorrow  and  obtain  His  sympathy. 
Jesus  prayed,  "If  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass 
from  me,"  in  order  that  He  might  obtain  strength 
to  drink  the  cup.  We  should  pray  as  He  did, 
pray  as  Roberston  of  Brighton  has  so  well  put  it, 
"until  prayer  makes  us  forget  our  own  wish,  and 
leave  or  merge  it  in  God's  will";  nothing  else  is 
prayer.  But  there  are  certain  things  which  it 
can  never  hurt  anyone  to  pray  for  and  to  pray 
for  repeatedly.  We  can  all  pray  to  be  kept  from 
sin,  to  be  given  power  to  conquer  faults,  strength 
to  bear  burdens,  to  grow  in  grace,  and  we  should 
pray  often  for  these  things  for  the  very  reason 
that  prayer  for  them  will  fix  the  attention  upon 
them,  will  make  us  want  them  more. 

Yet  I  fancy  that  even  when  we  love  God  with 
the  heart,  while  the  desire  for  prayer  will  always 
be  there,  just  as  the  desire  for  communion  with  a 
dear  earthly  friend  will  always  be  there,  it  will 
not  always  be  easy  to  obtain  our  desire,  at  least 
not  until  love  is  made  perfect  in  us,  and  we  are 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        133 

made  perfect  in  love.  Prayer  often  begins  with  a 
struggle.  Jacob  had  to  wrestle  all  night  with  the 
angel  before  he  obtained  the  blessing.  Jesus  Him- 
self was  in  an  agony  in  Gethsemane  before  the 
prayer  that  meant  real  communion  was  vouchsafed 
to  Him.  For  as  we  can  have  no  real  good  thing 
except  as  we  consciously  long  for  it  and  struggle 
for  it,  so  we  cannot  have  the  best  thing,  Divine 
communion,  without  a  struggle ;  indeed,  the  strug- 
gle is  part  of  the  blessing.  "As  the  hart  pant- 
eth  after  the  water-brooks,  so  panteth  my  soul 
after  Thee,  oh  God."  We  must  pant  before  we 
can  have  the  living  water,  thirst  before  we  can 
have  the  living  God. 

But  what  is  the  effect  of  this  emotional  love 
upon  character?  I  think  that  it  must  be  in  a 
greater  degree  the  same  as  the  effect  of  an  emo- 
tional, idealizing  friendship  upon  character;  that 
is,  it  is  inspiring,  creative.  For  it  is  emotional 
love,  and  only  emotional  love  that  is  creative.  The 
friend  whom  I  love  unemotionally  and  almost  un- 
consciously, that  is  whom  I  like  rather  than  love, 
may  hold  me  to  my  duty,  but  it  is  only  the  friend 
whom  I  love  emotionally  and  consciously  who  in- 
spires me  to  do  my  best,  nay,  who  inspires  me  to 
do  that  which  I  cannot  do.  Under  the  influence 
of  conscious  love  I  seem  to  understand  that  which 
I  cannot  understand,  for  to  the  lover  as  to  the 
artist  revelations  come  which  seem  not  the  result 
of  work  but  of  inspiration;  so  that  I  do  what  I 
cannot  do,  for  it  is  not  I  that  do  it,  but  my  friend 


134  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

that  liveth  in  me.  For  every  feeling  of  love,  the 
Talmud  tells  us,  gives  birth  involuntarily  to  an 
invisible  genius  or  spirit  which  yearns  to  complete 
its  existence.  So  when  we  come  into  emotional 
contact  with  the  living  God,  we  experience  His 
creative  power,  we  feel  that  He  is  making  some- 
thing different  of  us,  and  yet  not  something  dif- 
ferent, He  is  simply  making  us  ourselves.  For  as 
in  all  love  we  go  out  of  ourselves  to  find  ourselves, 
so  in  love  for  God  we  go  out  of  ourselves  to  find 
ourselves  in  God.  Thus  we  "come  to  ourselves," 
we  begin  to  "apprehend  that  for  which  we  have 
been  apprehended  of  Christ  Jesus,"  we  begin  to 
be  perfect,  that  is  made  through  and  through 
after  our  own  design,  each  one  the  perfect  ex- 
pression of  God's  thought  of  him,  the  fulfilment 
of  the  idea  which  God  had  in  mind  in  creating 
him.  And  becoming  ourselves,  we  lose  all  pre- 
tense,— we  become  perfectly  simple,  perfectly  sin- 
cere, for  we  see  that  the  ideal  of  life  is  not  to  pre- 
tend to  be  what  we  are  not,  but  to  be  ourselves, — 
our  best  selves.  Moreover  we  are  conscious  that 
we  are  in  the  Presence  of  the  Infinite,  and  in  that 
presence  all  shams  vanish. 

We  talk  sometimes  about  the  imitation  of 
Christ,  but  love  is  not  imitative,  love  is  creative. 
I  do  not  imitate  my  friend,  but  through  contact 
with  her  I  become  more  myself,  know  my  own 
powers  better  and  exercise  them  more.  We  can 
imitate  without  love  that  which  we  have  decided 
that  it  is  desirable  to  imitate;  sometimes  a  period 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        135 

of  conscious  imitation  may  wisely  precede  the  cre- 
ative period,  but  that  is  before  we  really  love, 
when  we  only  feel  that  we  ought  to  love.  We 
probably  can  imitate  better  when  we  do  not  love 
than  when  we  do  love,  for  imitation  is  cold,  crea- 
tion is  warm,  it  is  our  life-blood  that  we  put  into 
it.  Indeed,  when  we  become  truly  creative,  we 
lose  all  power  of  imitation,  for  we  cannot  be  real 
and  artificial,  dead  and  alive,  at  the  same  time. 
Just  as  the  effect  of  a  masterpiece  upon  an  orig- 
inal spirit  is  not  to  make  him  try  and  imitate  it, 
but  try  and  do  something  else  which  arises  in  his 
own  mind,  so  the  effect  of  an  appreciation  of  the 
revelation  of  God  in  Christ  upon  us  is  not  to  make 
us  do  what  Christ  did,  but  to  have  the  same  mind 
in  us  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus.  And  in  this 
emotional  creative  love  all  thought  of  duty  disap- 
pears;  the  artist  creates,  expresses  himself,  not 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  but  out  of  the  pure  joy  of 
creation,  because  he  cannot  help  himself;  so  the 
lover,  whether  of  God  or  man,  creates,  finds  the 
best  expression  for  himself,  not  out  of  a  sense  of 
duty,  but  because  he  too  cannot  help  himself,  out 
of  the  pure  joy  of  creation. 

Yet  while  creation  is  more  joyful  than  is  imita- 
tion, it  takes  more  strength,  but  love  supplies  the 
needed  strength.  For  just  as  love  of  the  creature 
leads  to  energy  and  concentration,  so  love  of  God 
leads  to  energy  and  concentration.  And  just  as 
earthly  love  gives  physical  strength  because  it 
gives  happiness,  and  no  doctor  possesses  the  cura- 


136  IN  CAMBREDGE  BACKS 

tive  power  that  is  latent  in  a  spark  of  happiness, 
so  the  love  of  God,  being  the  supreme  source  of 
happiness,  must  also  be  the  supreme  source  of 
physical  strength,  for,  as  Amiel  puts  it,  "the  high- 
est happiness  is  nothing  but  the  conquest  of  God 
through  love."  "The  joy  of  the  Lord  is  your 
strength."  "They  that  wait  upon  Jehovah  shall 
renew  their  strength ;  they  shall  mount  upon  wings 
as  eagles ;  they  shall  run,  and  not  be  weary ;  they 
shall  walk  and  not  faint." 

But  while  self-development  certainly  comes 
from  this  emotional  heart-love,  I  am  not  so  sure 
that  self-control  comes  from  it  in  equal  measure. 
That  I  am  inclined  to  think  is  more  the  result  of 
loving  God  with  the  will.  "The  great  idea  of 
duty,"  Goethe  tells  us,  "alone  can  keep  us  up- 
right," and  his  testimony  is  the  more  valuable, 
since  it  comes  from  one  who  in  his  inmost  being 
hated  and  resented  the  idea  of  duty.  Yet  even 
here  the  heart  does  play  its  part,  to  some  ex- 
tent it  helps  us  to  self-control,  but  to  an  even 
greater  extent  it  helps  us  by  making  self- 
control  in  great  measure  unnecessary.  That 
is  we  abstain  from  that  which  we  ought  not 
to  do,  chiefly  because  mind  and  heart  are 
so  filled  with  that  which  we  ought  to  do.  "If 
the  Son  shall  make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free  in- 
deed," free  I  take  it  even  from  temptation  to  sin, 
because  the  heart  will  be  so  filled  with  the  desire 
for  righteousnes.  When  love  is  perfect,  the  ex- 
hortation "Love  God  and  do  as  you  please"  is  a 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        137 

proper  one,  for  then  we  shall  please  only  what  God 
pleases.  When  Dante  found  himself  through  lov- 
ing Beatrice,  he  tells  us  that 

"  already  my  desire  and  will  were  turned,  even  as 
a  wheel  revolving  evenly 
By  the  love  that  moves  the  sun  and  other  stars." 

And  I  cannot  see  how  real,  intense  love,  whether 
for  God  or  man  can  fail  to  kill  all  desire  for  the 
grosser  forms  of  sin.  Love  is  the  great  purifier; 
one  of  the  first  things  which  creative  love  creates 
is  the  clean  heart. 

There  is  one  sin  which  I  find  that  strong  human 
friendship  certainly  does  help  me  to  refrain  from ; 
if  there  has  been  in  me  any  tendency  toward  bit- 
terness, I  put  it  aside  when  real  love  comes  to  me ; 
I  cannot  love  my  friend  with  all  my  heart  and  be 
bitter  toward  anyone.  In  "Sandra  Belloni"  Mere- 
dith represents  Merthyr  Powys  as  saying  that  love 
for  Italy  has  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  hate 
even  Austria,  Italy's  enemy.  When  Beatrice  sa- 
luted Dante  a  "flame  of  charity  possessed  him, 
which  made  him  pardon  whosoever  had  offended 
him."  So  love  toward  God  and  bitterness  toward 
man  cannot  exist  side  by  side.  "By  this  shall  all 
men  know  that  ye  are  my  disciples  if  ye  have  love 
one  toward  another."  "My  spirit  is  too  glad  and 
great,"  says  Luther,  "for  me  to  be  at  heart  an 
enemy  toward  anyone."  "Praised  be  my  Lord," 
says  St.  Francis,  "for  those  who  pardon  one  an- 
other for  His  love's  sake." 


138  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

Then  if  I  have  faults  that  especially  hurt  my 
friend,  if  I  realize  that  they  hurt  her,  love  makes 
me  put  forth  especial  efforts  to  conquer  them. 
For  after  all  most  of  us  do  not  sorrow  for  sin  be- 
cause it  is  sin,  but  because  it  has  hurt  someone, 
especially  someone  whom  we  love ;  few  of  us  would 
grieve  over  a  wrong  action  that  so  far  as  we  could 
see  had  hurt  no  one;  indeed,  it  might  be  difficult 
for  us  to  realize  that  it  was  sin.  But  when  we 
come  to  realize  the  personal  God,  and  to  have  a 
heart-love  for  Him,  we  shall  feel  that  all  sin  must 
be  guarded  against,  for  every  sin  especially  hurts 
God  since  all  sin  stands  in  the  way  of  that  for 
which  He  lives,  the  coming  of  His  kingdom.  So 
after  each  sin,  we  shall  know  the  bitterness  of  the 
Psalmist's  cry,  "Against  Thee,  Thee  only  have  I 
sinned,"  and  after  each  sin  we  will  pray  his 
prayer,  "Renew  a  right  spirit  within  me." 

Still  after  all  is  said  I  believe  that  heart-love 
is  inspiring  rather  than  controlling.  We  are  in- 
spired to  do  that  which  is  right,  we  are  not  in- 
spired to  abstain  from  that  which  is  wrong. 
Here  the  will  must  play  its  part;  even  when  the 
heart  moves  the  will,  the  action  of  the  latter  is 
conscious  and  sometimes  painful.  But  while,  so 
long  as  we  are  here,  self-control  is  as  important 
as  is  self-development,  and  frequently  the  neces- 
sary condition  of  self-development,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  it  is  the  lower  of  the  two  virtues. 
For  while  the  obligation  to  self-control  is  prob- 
ably   temporary,    the    obligation    to    self-develop- 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        139 

ment  is  eternal;  under  the  "ultimate  angels'  law" 
we  shall  indulge  every  instinct  of  the  soul 

"  There  where  life,  law,  joy,  impulse  are  one  thing." 

It  is  only  "when  the  fight  begins  within  himself 
that  a  man's  worth  somewhat";  we  are  "never  to 
leave  fighting  till  the  life  to  come,"  but  in  the  life 
to  come  we  probably  shall  leave  it.  And  it  is  in 
these  exalted  moments  of  conscious  emotional  love 
for  God  that  we  anticipate  "the  ultimate  angels' 
law." 

Thus  far  I  have  tried  to  describe  heart-love  at 
its  best,  but  there  is  another  side  to  the  picture. 
This  is  the  love  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  es- 
pecial mark  of  saintliness,  and  it  is  in  the  lives 
of  the  mediaeval  saints  that  it  is  exhibited  not 
only  in  its  strength,  but  also  in  its  weakness.  For 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  even  making  allowance  for 
the  difference  in  the  centuries,  and  admitting  that 
the  mission  of  certain  people  may  be  to  emphasize 
certain  virtues  even  at  the  expense  of  being  one- 
sided, the  lives  of  the  saints  are  frequently  dis- 
appointing. We  often  find  in  them  an  imagi- 
native absorption  in  the  love  of  God  which  seems 
to  cut  them  off  from  all  human  usefulness:  souls 
sit  and  sing  themselves  away  to  everlasting  bliss, 
as  though  religion  were  nothing  but  an  emotional 
debauch,  and  as  though  the  only  service  of  God 
were  adulation. 

The  trouble  is  not  far  to  seek ;  for  the  tempera- 


140  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

ment  of  the  saint  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  artist. 
Before  he  becomes  a  saint,  that  is  before  his  ex- 
cessive emotional  nature  fastens  itself  upon  God, 
he  is  subject  to  the  same  grosser  temptations  as 
those  to  which  the  artist  is  subject.     After  he  be- 
comes  a  saint,  his  temptations  are  the  more  re- 
fined and  subtle  temptations  which  beset  the  artist, 
especially  the  temptation  to  live  apart  from  real- 
ity.    As  the  artist  is  sometimes   absorbed  in  art 
to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else,  so  the  saint  is 
sometimes    absorbed   in   love   to   the   exclusion    of 
everything  else.      But  just  as  the  art  of  the  artist 
who  separates  himself  from  the  world  is  generally 
very  limited,  so  the  love  of  the  saint  who  separates 
himself  from  the  world  is  generally  very  imperfect, 
for  it  is  of  the  heart  alone,  intellect  and  will  do 
not  play  their  part.     Just  as  there  is  danger  in 
human  friendship  in  which  heart  and  soul  are  not 
balanced  by  mind  and  will,  so  there  is  danger  in 
such  a  friendship  with  God.     Love,  whether  it  be 
love  for  God  or  man,  demands  the  whole  being, 
else  it  is  not  love.     Love  which  is  of  the  heart 
alone  is  not  even  good  heart  love. 

If  I  love  my  friend  I  must  be  with  her,  must  be 
alone  with  her  at  times,  so  if  I  love  God  I  must  be 
with  Him,  must  be  alone  with  Him  at  times. 
Sometimes  at  the  beginning  of  a  great  earthly 
love  the  disposition  is  to  give  up  a  considerable 
period  of  time  not  to  working  but  to  loving,  and 
if  this  be  a  preparation,  a  gathering  of  strength 
and  inspiration  for  future  work,  it  is  well.     Some- 


FIRST  GREAT  COMMANDMENT        141 

times  too  when  wearied  by  work  it  is  good  to  stop 
awhile,  and  to  give  ourselves  up  to  love.  And 
what  is  good  in  human  friendship  is  good  also 
in  Divine  friendship.  St.  Paul  spent  three  years 
in  Arabia.  Many  Christians  find  it  well  to  go 
occasionally  into  retreat,  all  true  lovers  of  God 
will  want  to  be  alone  with  Him  at  times.  Yet  St. 
Francis  and  some  others  of  the  better  balanced 
saints  have  recognized  the  desire  to  live  perma- 
nently with  God,  apart  from  the  world,  as  one  of 
the  sorest  temptations  that  could  come  to  them. 
For  just  as  there  may  be  a  tendency  toward  a 
sentimental  human  friendship,  so  there  may  be  a 
tendency  toward  a  sentimental  friendship  with 
God.  A  friendship  that  is  mere  reveling  in  emo- 
tion, that  separates  rne  from  work,  that  practi- 
cally separates  me  from  my  fellows,  even  although 
it  may  arouse  a  sentimental  tenderness  for  them, 
that  mjakes  me  always  desire  to  be  alone  with  my 
friend,  whose  perfect  congeniality  makes  uncon- 
genial and  irritating  people  even  more  uncongenial 
and  irritating,  is  weakening  and  immoral.  So 
an  emotional  love  for  God  that  does  not  help  us 
to  do  our  work  and  love  our  neighbor  is  weakening 
and  immoral. 

For  a  friend  is  one  who  helps  me  to  do  and  to  be 
my  best,  friendship  is  union  in  great  interests,  its 
chief  glory  is  fellow-work.  So  friendship  with 
God  will  make  us  not  idle  dreamers,  but  co-workers 
with  Him.  We  work  with  Him,  not  for  Him.  I 
would  like  to  do  things  for  my  friends,  but  there 


lm  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

is  very  seldom  anything  that  I  can  do,  so  my  love 
for  them  expresses  itself  in  doing  my  daily  work 
more  enthusiastically.  Should  not  love  for  God 
find  similar  expression?  Work  can  never  really 
separate  me  from  a  friend,  never  interrupt  com- 
munion with  her,  for  though  her  body  may  be 
thousands  of  miles  away,  her  spirit  is  closest  to 
me  when  I  am  working  most  earnestly  and  most 
joyously.  So  do  we  not  after  all  find  our  best 
communion  with  God  in  work?  If  St.  Francis  had 
tried  very  long  living  with  God  apart  from  the 
world,  he  would  have  found  that  he  was  not  even 
with  God.     Laborare  est  orare. 

In  the  King  James'  Version  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment Jesus  is  represented  as  saying  "Be  ye  there- 
fore perfect,  even  as  your  Father  which  is  in 
Heaven  is  perfect" ;  in  the  Revision  the  command 
is  turned  into  a  promise,  "Ye  shall  therefore  be 
perfect."  Is  the  command  to  love  the  Lord  our 
God  with  all  our  heart,  with  all  our  soul,  with  all 
our  mind,  and  with  all  our  strength  also  a  promise  ? 


VIII 

IMMORTALITY 

In  the  course  of  my  illness  this  summer  I  have 
been  more  than  once  under  the  influence  of  ether. 
The  first  time  it  made  a  great  impression  upon 
me.  Two  classmates,  both  very  dear  friends, 
were  with  me  for  some  hours  before;  they  acconv- 
panied  me  to  the  door  of  the  operating  room; 
then  the  one  bade  me  an  affectionate  farewell, 
while  the  other,  a  woman  physician,  went  in  with 
me  and  held  my  hand  while  the  ether  was  being 
administered.  When  I  came  to  myself,  I  was  in 
my  own  room,  my  doctor  friend  was  with  me  tend- 
erly caring  for  me,  while  on  my  table  were  letters 
and  flowers  from  other  friends.  I  had  a  feeling 
that  I  had  somehow  undergone  a  great  change, 
that  I  had  in  fact  been  dead  and  come  to  life 
again,  and  that  the  new  life  was  better  and  sweeter 
than  the  old  had  been.  Since  then  I  have  liked 
to  dwell  upon  that  experience,  upon  the  love  that 
was  the  last  thing  of  which  I  was  conscious  before 
I  went  to  sleep,  and  the  love  that  was  the  first 
thing  of  which  I  was  conscious  when  I  awoke. 
And  I  have  wondered  if  when  death  really  comes 
to  me  it  will  not  be  like  that,  just  a  passing  from 
love  to  love.  If  it  is  not  that,  I  feel  that  I  cannot 
143 


144  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

bear  to  die,  and  neither  can  I  bear  to  live,  for  if 
"all  fairest  things  are  doomed  to  swiftest  death," 
I  cannot  choose  but  "weep  to  have  that  which  I 
fear  to  lose." 

I  have  a  friend  with  whom  I  have  sometimes  dis- 
cussed the  subject  of  personal  immortality,  and 
she  tells   me  that  there  is   a  sense  in  which  she 
could  be  content,  if  it  were  necessary,  to  give  up 
the  hope  of  existence  beyond  the  grave,  that  since 
she  is  absolutely  sure  of  the  goodness  of  a  God 
who  loves  us,  she  knows  that  He  will  do  what  is 
best  for  us,  and  if  He  denies  us  the  immortality 
which  we  crave,  she  can  believe  that  that  too  is 
love ;  for  some  reason  known  only  to  Him  it  is  not 
good  that  we  should  have  it,  and  so  she  can  say 
with  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson  "Even  if  death  is  an  end, 
an  extinction,  the  thought  does  not  afflict  me — I 
am  in  the  Father's  hands.     The  Father's  arm  is 
strong,  and  His  heart  is  very  large."     I  confess 
that  if  it  came  to  a  choice,  I  would  prefer  giving  up 
a  personal  God  to  giving  up  personal  immortality. 
For  whether  there  is  a  loving  All-Father  or  not, 
I  could  never  doubt  Matthew  Arnold's  "Power  not 
ourselves    that    makes    for    righteousness,"    I    am 
sure  of  that  because  of  what  I  feel  within  myself, 
and  because  of  what  I  see  around  me.     For  I  find 
that    all    the    experiences    of   life    are    means    of 
growth,  sometimes  I  think  almost  irrespective  of 
the  way  in  which  I  take  them.      Some  things  I 
have  borne  well,  others  I  have  borne  badly,  yet 
when  they  have  passed  I  find  that  through  all  I 


IMMORTALITY  145 

have  grown.     Doubtless  I  should  have  grown  more 
had  I  borne  everything  well,  yet  even  as  it  is  I 
have  grown.     This  Power  plus  immortality  would 
mean  more  to  me  than  a  God  who,  I  was  told,  loved 
me,   without  immortality.     Indeed  I  find   such  a 
God  unthinkable.     For  if  God  loves  us,  and  yet 
the  soul  is  not  immortal  there  are  so  many  people 
to  whom  He  gives  so  little  sign  of  loving,  who 
could  not  possibly  believe  that  He  loves  them  for 
anything   that   they   can   see  here.     I   have  had 
more  reasons  than  most  people  have  had  for  be- 
lieving  that   God   is    love.     Some   of   the   things 
that  I  have  wanted  to  have  have  been  given  to  me 
to  have,  some  of  the  things  that  I  have  wanted  to 
do  have  been  granted  to  me  to  do ;  when  I  have 
been  denied  that  which  I  wanted  to  have,  or  that 
which  I  wanted  to  do,  I  have  sometimes  been  able 
to  see  a  reason  for  it,  so  that  in  time  it  has  been 
possible    for    me   to   say   understanding^    "It   is 
better  so."     But  what  of  the  lives  full  of  promise 
that  have  been  cut  off  early?     I  do  not  speak  of 
those  who  die  in  infancy,  for  while  from  one  point 
of  view  their  lives  seem  sheer  waste,  it  might  be 
argued  that  they  are  born  and  die  for  their  par- 
ents' sake.  ^  But  what  of  the  youths  full  of  talent 
and  enthusiasm,  perhaps  even  of  genius,  who  have 
passed  away  when  just  ready  to  begin  their  life 
work?     The  only  reason  that  we  can  possibly  see 
which  would  justify  a  loving  God  in  allowing  such 
lives   to  become  extinct,  is  that  there  was  some 
great  evil  ahead  of  them,  which  He  saw  but  we 


146  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

could  not  see;  some  evil  so  great  that  eternal 
death  was  better  than  such  suffering.  But  the 
answer  to  this  is  that  if  He  is  God  and  All-Power- 
ful, He  could  have  averted  the  evil;  we  are  shut 
up  then  to  the  conclusion  that  if  He  allows  such 
lives  to  pass  into  nothingness,  He  is  lacking  either 
in  love  or  in  power: — that  is,  He  is  not  God. 

Then  there  are  lives  that  are  cut  off  in  the  midst 
of  a  great  experience,  before  they  have  had  time 
to    learn   the    lesson    that    the   experience    should 
teach;   the   lesson,    for  instance,   that   sin   should 
teach.     For  I  believe  that  even  our   sins   are  in 
God's  hands,  part  of  His  ordering  for  us.     For 
to  the  growing  nature,  growth  often  comes  out 
of   yielding  to   temptation,   a   different  kind  but 
perhaps  as  great  a  growth  as  comes  from  resist- 
ing it.      So  while  it  does  not  diminish  our  sin  and 
responsibility,  in   the  larger  scheme   of  things  I 
believe  that  God  means  us  to  yield,  that  He  some- 
times has  a  lesson  for  us  that  yielding  to  tempta- 
tion will  teach,  and  that  resisting  would  not  have 
taught.     The  author  of  the  fifty-first  Psalm  had 
learned  some  things  that  only  sin  could  teach,  and 
when  he  had  learned  his  lesson  he  was  able  to  teach 
it  to  all  the  generations  of  men  that  should  come 
after.     But    there    are   souls,   beautiful    growing 
souls  like  the  Psalmist's,  that  are  cut  off  just  at 
the  moment  of  yielding.     There  is  no  chance  for 
them  to  learn  sin's  lesson  here;  is  there  no  other 
place  where  they  can  learn  it? 

In  this  world  too  punishment  is  not  in  propor- 


IMMORTALITY  147 

tion  to  sin;  we  frequently  pay  heavier  penalties 
for  bad  judgment  than  we  do  for  bad  morals ;  the 
sins  which  spring  from  the  excesses  of  human  na- 
ture are  more  severely  punished  than  those  which 
spring  from  its  deficiencies,  yet  we  all  feel  that  the 
former  indicate  a  larger  and  more  generous  na- 
ture than  do  the  latter.  Is  there  no  place  where 
the  balance  will  be  set  right? 

Again  the  lives  that  seem  most  pitiful  to  me  are 
the  naturally  aspiring  but  empty  lives,  the  lives 
for  instance,  of  many  unmarried  and  some  mar- 
ried women  of  a  generation  ago ;  women  who  were 
denied  both  satisfying  love  and  inspiring  work, 
because  they  were  born  too  soon,  and  both  en- 
vironment and  lack  of  training  prevented  them 
from  shaping  full  lives  for  themselves.  Such 
lives  are  to  me  infinitely  more  pitiful  than  are 
those  to  whom  great  sorrow  and  suffering  has 
come,  for  suffering  is  in  itself  part  of  the  richness 
of  life.  But  who  shall  estimate  the  dreariness  of 
the  life  to  which  both  joy  and  sorrow  have  been 
denied?  the  pain  not  of  having  lost,  but  of  never 
having  had?  In  thinking  of  such  souls  I  have 
found  comfort  in  an  experience  of  my  own. 
There  were  two  years  of  my  life  which  seemed 
an  utter  blank  to  me,  no  joy,  no  growth,  but 
when  they  were  over  and  I  was  far  enough  re- 
moved from  them  to  look  back  upon  them,  I  felt 
that  they  had  been  the  two  most  fruitful  years 
that  I  had  known,  and  I  thanked  God  for  them. 
And  I  have  wondered  whether  those  to  whom  not 


148  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

only  two  years  but  the  whole  life  has  seemed 
empty,  may  not  when  life  is  over  and  they  are 
able  to  look  back  upon  it,  have  a  similar  experi- 
ence, whether  the  Psalmist  could  have  had  such 
an  experience  in  mind  when  he  wrote  "I  shall  be 
satisfied  when  I  awake  in  Thy  likeness,"  satisfied 
with  the  apparent  emptiness,  because  he  could  see 
a  reason  for  it?  But  if  such  an  one  never  wakes 
up,  how  shall  he  be  satisfied?  Is  there  no  place 
where  such  a  woman, — it  is  generally  a  woman — 
can  "open  her  mouth  wide  and  He  will  fill  it?" 
fill  it  if  need  be  with  even  some  of  the  pain  that 
she  has  missed  here? 

And  what  of  the  submerged  tenth  or  more  than 
a  tenth,  born  in  the  slums,  some  of  them  perhaps 
with  aspirations  of  which  they  themselves  are  ig- 
norant? forced  to  think  of  nothing  save  "What 
shall  we  eat,  and  what  shall  we  drink,  and  where- 
withal shall  we  be  clothed?"  and  then,  alas!  not 
always  obtaining  food  and  drink  and  clothing! 
Then  there  are  whole  races  to  whom  apparently 
no  chance  has  been  given.  When  I  was  a  little 
girl  I  heard  a  story  which  some  African  tribes, — 
I  know  not  which  ones, — tell  among  themselves  in 
order  to  account  for  the  differences  in  races.  I 
will  tell  it  as  I  remember  it.  "When  God  first 
created  man,"  so  these  poor  savages  say,  "he 
created  a  white  man,  and  it  was  very  early  in  the 
morning.  So  God  said  'It  is  early,  and  I  have 
plenty  of  time ;  sit  down  and  I  will  teach  you  some 
things.'     And  God  taught  the  white  man  how  to 


IMMORTALITY  149 

make  houses,  ships,  cloth  and  many  other  things 
until  the  white  man  knew  nearly  as  much  as  God 
knew.  Then  he  made  another  man, — a  man  be- 
longing to  our  highest  tribe,  and  God  said  to  him, 
'Well,  it  is  still  fairly  early,  sit  down,  and  I  will 
teach  you  some  things.'  So  God  taught  him  some 
things,  not  so  many  as  he  taught  the  white  man, 
but  still  a  good  many.  And  so  each  man  that  was 
created  was  taught  fewer  things,  until  at  last  God 
created  a  man  belonging  to  our  lowest  tribe,  and 
to  him  He  said,  'Well,  it  is  very  late,  I  have  no 
time  to  talk  to  you.  Go  and  catch  fish,  perhaps 
sometime  I  will  come  back.'  God  has  not  come 
back  yet,  so  that  man  still  knows  nothing,  except 
how  to  catch  fish."  Perhaps  God  will  come  back 
to  that  lowest  tribe  sometime;  if  He  does  it  will 
be  well  for  the  generation  to  which  He  comes,  but 
what  of  the  generations  of  men  who  have  died 
knowing  nothing  save  how  to  catch  fish?  What 
too  of  our  ancestors  who  died  in  savagery,  know- 
ing nothing  of  the  higher  joys  of  life,  and 
scarcely  anything  of  the  lower?  We  are  told 
sometimes  that  the  object  of  creation,  of  life,  is 
not  the  perfection  of  the  individual,  but  the  per- 
fection of  the  race.  But  can  we  believe  that  God 
loves  one  generation  so  much  more  than  another 
that  He  would  sacrifice  thousands  of  generations 
to  the  perfection  of  one  ultimate  generation? 
Nay,  rather  if  God  is  love,  must  we  not  all,  all 
generations,  all  races,  all  individuals  "come  in  the 
unity  of  the  faith  and  the  knowledge  of  the  Son 


150  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

of  God  unto  the  perfect  man,  unto  the  measure  of 
the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ?" 

Then  these  aspirations  which  we  all  have,  and 
which  cannot  be  fulfilled  here,  do  not  these  too 
point  toward  immortality?  Take  the  accomplish- 
ment of  him  who  has  accomplished  the  most,  is  it 
not  only  a  small  fraction  of  that  to  which  he  as- 
pires? Thus  our  failures  here  are  "but  a  tri- 
umph's evidence  for  the  fulness  of  the  days." 
And  life  must  last  not  a  short  time  after  death, 
but  forever,  since  the  blessed  truth  is  that  our  as- 
pirations will  never  be  satisfied.  For  the  happi- 
ness of  life  consists  not  in  having,  but  in  wanting, 
and  the  spiritual  man  is  so  constituted  that  his 
aspirations  will  always  be  ahead  of  his  attainment, 
his  "reach  will  always  exceed  his  grasp." 

"We  do  not  see  it  where  it  is, 
At  the  beginning  of  the  race; 
As  we  proceed  it  shifts  its  place, 
And  where  we  looked  for  crowns  to  fall, 
We  find  the  tug's  to  come, —  that's  all." 

But  if  our  failures,  failures  which,  thank  God, 
are  to  continue  to  all  eternity,  are  an  argument 
in  favor  of  immortality,  no  less  are  our  successes. 
For  not  only  prophets,  poets,  artists  and  musi- 
cians, but  even  those  to  whom  they  spake  have 
shared  God's  thoughts  with  Him,  have  lived  in 
rapturous  communion  with  God,  walking  and  talk- 
ing with  Him  as  a  man  talketh  with  his  friend. 
Could  we  love  or  even  respect  a  God  who  dropped 


IMMORTALITY  151 

his  friends,  the  sharer  of  his  thoughts  into  utter 
nothingness?  or  even  absorbed  their  individuality 
in  Himself?  We  are  not  God,  nor  part  of  God; 
we  are  friends  of  God,  and  such  we  must  ever  be. 
This  new  spirit  of  mechanical  invention  too,  the 
marvelous  power  which  man  is  acquiring  over  na- 
ture, which  has  not  only  increased  our  physical 
comfort  in  so  many  ways,  but  has  also  vastly  mul- 
tiplied our  intellectual  interests,  is  not  this  too  an 
evidence  of  immortality  ?  For  if  we  are  Christians 
believing  in  the  continuous  inspiration  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  the  source  of  civilization,  we  shall  rec- 
ognize that  the  God  who  has  spoken  to  us  so  often 
in  the  past  through  poets,  musicians  and  painters, 
is  now  perhaps  speaking  to  us  most  clearly 
through  the  scientist,  and  that  the  spirit  great 
enough  to  transmit  or  even  to  understand  the 
wonderful  message  must  be  immortal.  So  too  the 
being  in  a  foreign  country,  or  even  reading  or 
speaking  a  foreign  language  brings  me  this  sense 
of  immortality.  For  the  broadening  of  experi- 
ence, the  living  so  to  speak  in  a  new  world  and 
adapting  myself  to  it,  gives  me  the  feeling  that 
the  mind  which  is  capable  of  such  enlargement, 
must  have  endless  enlargement  awaiting  it,  must 
live  forever. 

But  perhaps  nothing  gives  me  this  assurance  of 
an  endless  life  so  strongly  as  the  making  of  a  new 
friend.  An  experience  so  broadening,  so  deepen- 
ing, so  uplifting  as  love  must  surely  last  forever. 
I  have  known  people  who  because  they  had   no 


152  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

strong  sense  of  immortality  were  afraid  to  make 
close  friends,  lest  they  should  lose  them.  I  do  not 
wonder;  when  I  was  a  little  girl,  I  wanted  a  bird, 
but  was  afraid  to  have  it  lest  it  should  die.  If  I 
do  not  believe  that  my  friend  and  I  are  immortal, 
I  cannot  enjoy  her  even  while  I  have  her  She  is 
meadows,  sun  and  breeze  to  me,  but  of  what  avail 
would  be  meadows,  sun  and  breeze,  if  I  did  not  be- 
lieve in  God,  if  I  did  not  believe  in  immortality? 
The  very  passion  with  which  I  enter  upon  a 
friendship,  the  newness  of  life  which  comes  to  me 
with  it,  is  to  me  an  argument  in  favor  of  immor- 
tality, but  most  of  all  the  aspiration  that  comes 
with  it.  When  I  love  I  want  to  do  something  for 
the  object  of  mly  love,  but  I  think  that  even  more 
than  that  I  want  to  make  my  own  life  higher  and 
better,  more  worthy  of  my  love.  The  dog  too 
loves  his  master,  and  wishes  to  please  him,  but  be- 
yond that  his  love  kindles  no  aspiration  in  him. 
In  man  alone  is  love  what  Mazzini  says  that  it 
should  be,  "the  union  of  souls  that  aspire,  the 
flight  of  the  soul  toward  God."  When  we  really 
love,  love  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  we  "lift  up 
our  hearts"  and  when  we  lift  up  our  hearts,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  we  "lift  them  up  to 
Him." 

And  then  there  is  the  unrequited  love;  is  not 
part  of  the  reason  that  love  is  unrequited  to  be 
found  in  the  fact  that  earthly  love  is  partly  physi- 
cal, that  it  must  find  physical  expression?  I  can- 
not believe  that  I  can  ever  feel  a  spiritual  affinity 


IMMORTALITY  153 

toward  a  person  without  that  affinity  really  ex- 
isting; some  day  she  whom  I  love  will  come  to  see 
it,  will  acknowledge  it  in  eternity  if  not  in  time. 
Here  she  is  slow  to  perceive  it,  perhaps  because  I 
cannot  find  the  right  expression  for  the  spiritual 
that  is  in  me,  or  perhaps  she  knows  that  it  exists, 
but  because  of  physical  limitations  she  cannot  re- 
spond; perhaps  while  I  suit  her  spiritually,  I  do 
not  suit  her  physically,  tire  her  when  I  should 
rest  her.  There  there  will  be  no  bodies,  or  at 
least  no  bodies  that  can  be  wearied.  Or  she  may 
already  have  so  many  friends  that  there  is  no  time 
or  strength  for  another;  there  time  and  strength 
will  not  be  limited.  So  in  the  next  life  I  shall  have 
the  love  that  I  have  missed  in  this, 

"for  God  above 
Is  great  to  grant  as  mighty  to  make 

And  creates  the  love  to  reward  the  love, 
I  claim  you  still  for  my  own  love's  sake." 

When  I  speak  of  immortality  it  is  personal  im- 
mortality that  I  mean ;  for  no  other  immortality 
should  I  care.  If  I  am  to  survive,  it  must  be  I, — 
I  with  the  memory  of  my  past,  with  all  the  ties 
that  were  formed  here  on  earth,  for  if  I  have  no 
memory  of  my  existence  here,  I  might  just  as  well 
become  extinct,  and  another  spirit  be  created.  I 
know  that  there  are  thinkers  like  Mr.  Maeterlinck 
who  believe  that  spirit  is  indestructible  in  the  same 
sense  in  which  they  believe  that  matter  is  in- 
destructible; that  is,  that  at  death  it  is  absorbed 


154  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

into  the  sum  total  of  spirit.  I  find  Mr.  Maeter- 
linck's position  more  logical  than  Mr.  Benson's. 
For  Mr.  Benson  finds  no  difficulty  in  believing  in 
a  personal  God,  who  is  All-Love  and  All-Power, 
yet  thinks  it  possible  that  this  powerful,  loving 
God  may  for  some  reason  deny  us  personal  im- 
mortality. I  maintain  that  if  God,  a  Person,  loves 
me  as  a  Person,  my  personality  must  survive ;  that 
anything  else  is  unthinkable.  But  Mr.  Maeter- 
linck denies  personality  to  God  in  so  many  words, 
and  when  we  read  his  essays  and  see  to  what  an 
extent  he  believes  the  spiritual  life  to  be  based 
upon  the  physical,  and  when  we  read  his  dramas 
and  see  how  his  people  are  the  playthings  of  Fate, 
we  feel  that  he  all  but  denies  personality  to  man. 
A  wise  teacher  of  mine  taught  me  to  define  a  per- 
son as  one  who  has  the  power  to  choose.  In  that 
sense  Mr.  Maeterlinck's  "Pelleas  and  Melisande" 
certainly  are  not  persons ;  their  actions  and  des- 
tiny are  governed  entirely  by  blind  Fate.  Now 
if  we  deny  personality  to  both  man  and  God,  it 
follows  as  a  matter  of  course  that  there  can  be  no 
personal  immortality;  we  who  are  not  persons 
here  cannot  be  persons  anywhere  else ;  the  only  im- 
mortality possible  for  us  is  to  be  absorbed  in  the 
impersonal  God.  Accept  Mr.  Maeterlinck's  prem- 
ises, and  his  conclusions  follow  naturally. 

And  I  do  not  know  how  his  premises  can  be  ab- 
solutely proved  false;  the  line  of  argument  which 
attracts  me  most  is  that  suggested  by  Mr.  Ches- 
terton.    He  points  out  that  there  is  no  way  by 


IMMORTALITY  155 

which  we  can  answer  the  mad  man  logically,  for 
his  explanation  of  a  thing  is  always  complete,  and 
often  in  a  purely  rational  sense  satisfactory,  or 
at  least  it  is  unanswerable.      "If  a  man  says  for 
instance    that    certain    men    have    a    conspiracy 
against  him,  you  cannot  dispute  it  except  by  say- 
ing that  the  men  deny  that  they  are  conspirators, 
which  is  exactly  what  conspirators  would  do.     Or 
if  a  man  says  that  he  is  Jesus  Christ,  it  is  no  ar- 
gument to  tell  him  that  the  world  denies  his  di- 
vinity, for  the  world  denied  Christ's.     But  speak- 
ing quite  externally  and  empirically,  we  may  say 
that  the  strongest  and  most  unmistakable  mark 
of  madness  is  the  combination  between  a  logical 
completeness    and    a    spiritual    contraction.     The 
lunatic's  explanation  explains,  but  it  does  not  ex- 
plain in  a  large  way.     The  best  way  to  answer 
the  lunatic  who  believed  that  his  neighbors  were 
conspiring  against  him  would  be  to  say,  suppose 
we  grant  the  details;  perhaps  when  the  man  in 
the  street  did  not  seem  to  see  you,  it  was  only  his 
cunning;  perhaps  when  the  policeman  asked  him 
his  name,  it  was  only  because  he  knew  it  already. 
But  how  much  happier  you  would  be  if  you  only 
knew  that  these  people  cared  nothing  about  you ! 
How  much  larger  your  life  would  be  if  your  self 
could  become  smaller  in  it !"     Or  to  the  madman 
who  called  himself  Christ,  "So  you  are  the  creator 
of  the  world !  but  what  a  small  world  it  must  be ! 
What  a  little  heaven  you  must  inhabit  with  an- 
gels no  bigger  than  butterflies !" 


156  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

And  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  is  the  way  that 
wise   doctors   and  nurses   do   talk  to  the  insane. 
They  do  not   say,   "Your  position   is   absolutely 
without  foundation,"  but  "see  where  it  lands  you." 
Now  see  where  Mr.  Maeterlinck's  position  lands 
him.     Not  only  does  it  shut  out  personal  immor- 
tality,  but   see   where   it  lands   him   in   this   life. 
Fate  determined  the  destiny  of  "Pelleas  and  Meli- 
sande"   and  will   determine  the  destiny   of  Meli- 
sande's  daughter.     That  is,  having  no  power  to 
choose,  they  have  not  really  sinned,  the  most  dis- 
mal of  all  doctrines.     To  my  mind  the  immorality 
of  the  drama  does  not  lie  in  the  fact  that  the  love 
therein  depicted  was  unlawful,  that  at  least  is  the 
smallest  part  of  it,  but  in  the  fact  that  it  was 
such  a  vile  thing  even  had  it  been  lawful ;  a  purely 
physical  and  sensuous  thing  without  a  spark  of 
aspiration  in  it.     I  find  the  sensuosity  in  this  case 
even  worse  than  sensuality,  for  in  the  latter  there 
is  often  a  certain  kind  of  strength;  here  there  is 
nothing  but  weakness.     Mr.  Maeterlinck  tries  to 
make  us  see  that  the  lower  animals  are  almost  up 
to  man's   level.     He   succeeds   in  making  us   see, 
that  admit  his  premises,  man  is   almost  down  to 
the  level  of  the  beasts. 

I  had  a  college  acquaintance  who  startled  me 
the  first  time  that  she  called  upon  me,  by  telling 
me  that  she  was  looking  forward  with  the  greatest 
of  pleasure  to  the  time  when  she  should  get  rid  of 
her  body,  for  most  of  her  troubles  and  most  of  her 
faults  came  to  her  through  her  body.     The  re- 


IMMORTALITY  157 

mark  made  an  impression  upon  me,  partly  because 
it  was  such  an  unusual  statement  for  a  young  girl 
to  make  (there  was  something  about  her  which 
made  it  impossible  to  doubt  her  sincerity)  and 
partly  because  it  was  not  long  before  her  wish  was 
granted ;  she  did  get  rid  of  her  body.  But  I  can- 
not say  that  I  sympathize  with  her  now  any  more 
than  I  did  then ;  it  seems  to  me  that  the  spirit  owes 
so  much  to  the  body  that  I  can  hardly  imagine  it 
as  continuing  to  exist  without  the  body.  All 
knowledge  and  all  feeling  come  to  us  at  first 
through  the  body,  and  all  expression  of  knowledge 
and  feeling  is  through  the  body.  Most  of  our 
temptations  come  to  us,  directly  or  indirectly, 
through  the  body,  which  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  our  moral  characters  come  to  us  through  the 
body,  since  "as  there  is  nothing  good  save  the  good 
will,"  without  temptation  moral  character  would 
be  impossible.  And  the  care  which  the  body  re- 
quires, the  struggle  for  material  things  which  it 
necessitates,  although  it  may  seem  an  impediment, 
is  the  means  by  which  the  spirit  is  disciplined. 
The  people  who  live  in  fertile  countries  where 
physical  wants  are  easily  supplied  generally  de- 
velop less  morally  than  do  those  who  live  in  a 
country  where  the  means  of  subsistence  are  more 
difficult  to  obtain.  Even  the  weak  body  may  be 
an  advantage,  for  the  regular  life  which  the  weak 
have  to  live  in  order  to  live  at  all  may  make  them 
so  systematic  that  they  accomplish  more  than  the 
average  strong  person  does,  while  the  discipline 


158  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

of  suffering  frequently  gives  a  sweetness  of  spirit 
and  a  quickness  of  sympathy  rarely  found  among 
the  physically  strong.  Moreover  physical  limita- 
tions often  define  our  way  by  cutting  off  many 
tempting  possibilities ;  thus  the  whole  life  is  con- 
centrated on  that  which  it  can  do  best,  and  in 
the  long  run  counts  for  more  than  it  would,  had 
its  energies  been  dissipated  in  a  variety  of  direc- 
tions. I  have  a  very  ardent  love  of  study,  of  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge,  and  I  sometimes  think 
that  I  might  have  been  a  mere  cram,  had  not 
weakness  of  the  flesh  forced  me  to  take  seasons 
to  reflect.  The  teacher  whom  I  have  quoted  be- 
fore used  to  say,  "The  Sabbath  was  given  to  us 
to  protect  us  against  narrowness."  I  suppose  she 
meant  that  if  we  did  not  have  our  Sabbath  rest, 
each  would  become  so  absorbed  in  his  own  little 
piece  of  work  that  he  would  be  unable  to  see  it  in 
its  relation  to  the  whole.  I  have  sometimes 
thought  that  my  weak  body  was  given  to  me  for 
a  similar  reason,  to  protect  me  from  the  narrow- 
ness which  a  mere  accumulation  of  facts  en- 
genders. So  with  the  poet  I  can  say  "nor  soul 
helps  flesh  more  now  than  flesh  helps  soul,"  and 
with  the  Apostle  I  can  say  that  I  "desire  not  to 
be  unclothed,  but  clothed  upon." 

But  perhaps  a  time  will  come  when  the  body  has 
given  to  the  spirit  all  that  it  has  to  give,  a  time 
when  it  can  no  longer  help  but  impede,  and  then 
like  all  institutions  that  have  been  useful,  but  have 
survived  their  usefulness,  the  monastery  and  the 


IMMORTALITY  159 

feudal  system  for  instance,  it  must  give  way,  the 
mind  can  get  on  without  it.     Even  here  we  very 
soon   discover   that  while   the  bodily   organs   are 
witnesses  from  whose  testimony  we  must  form  our 
conception  of  Truth,  they  are  deceptive  witnesses ; 
it  is  only  through  thought  and  reason  that  we  at- 
tain to  accurate  knowledge  of  what  they  witness. 
That  is  we  can,  as  Plato  puts  it,  attain  to  real 
truth  only  when  we  approach  it  "with  the  eye  of 
the  mind  alone,  not  allowing  when  in  the  act  of 
thought  the  intrusion  or  introduction  of  sight  or 
any  other  sense  in  the  company  of  reason,  but 
with  the  very  light  of  the  mind  in  her  clearness 
penetrating   into    the   very   heart   of   truth."     A 
time  may  come  when  it  is  no  longer  necessary  for 
the  body  to  furnish  to  the  mind  the  imperfect  data 
upon  which  it  reasons,  when  the  spirit  has  learned 
all  that  it  can  learn  from  the  body,  when  the  body 
in    turn    has    expressed    all    that    the    spirit    has 
learned  from  it  that  it  can  express;  then  even  a 
strong  and  perfect  body  would  impede,  and  the 
body  when  it  has  performed  its  mission  does  not 
stay  strong  and  perfect;  it  begins  to  decay.     It 
is  true  that  the  mind  seems  at  times  to  decay  with 
it,  that  even  the  moral  nature  sometimes  seems  to 
give  way,  and  this  often  makes  us  feel  that  since 
the  spirit  weakens  as  the  body  weakens,  it  must 
die  when   the  body   dies.      But   perhaps   the  soul 
just  goes  to  sleep   to  wake  up  again  refreshed. 
Nor  does  mental  and  moral  decay  always  accom- 
pany  physical   decay.     Have   we   not   all  known 


160  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

people  who  while  the  outward  man  perished  the 
inward  man  was  renewed  day  by  day? 

Jesus  Christ  had  not  the  slightest  doubt  of  im- 
mortality.    He  found  it  proved  even  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Moses.     With  fullest  confidence  he  could 
say  "I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you."     When  I 
was  a  child  I  was  taken  to  an  artist's  studio  to  see 
some  pictures  which  he  had  had  on  exhibition  in 
Paris.     He  told  us  that  while  there  he  had  over- 
heard  a   Frenchman   criticise   the   brilliancy  with 
which  he  had  depicted  the  autumn  foliage  of  a  New 
England  forest ;  such  coloring,  the  critic  said,  did 
not  exist  in  nature.     To  which  another  Frenchman 
replied,   "Do   you   see  that  sky?     The  man  who 
could  paint  a  sky  like  that  would  not  make  a  mis- 
take  about  other  things."     Jesus   Christ  was   so 
right  about  all  the  things  of  which  I  can  judge, 
I  feel  that  I  can  trust  Him  not  to  make  a  mistake 
about  the  things  of  which  I  cannot  judge.     For 
the  more  I  think  about  the  teachings  of  Jesus  and 
compare  them  with  those  of  other  teachers,  the 
more   am  I  struck  with  the  truth  of  the  saying 
"Never    man    so    spake."     Those    who   bore    this 
testimony   had   perhaps    not    heard   many    great 
teachers,  could  not  compare  him,  as  the  fashion 
now  is,  with  Buddha,  Confucius  or  Socrates,  but 
if  they  had  been  able  to  do  so,  I  think  that  their 
verdict  would  have  been  the  same.     How  wonder- 
ful it  is  that  in  that  age  He  never  said  anything 
that  could  offend  the  morality,  or  even  the  taste 
of  the  twentieth   century!     It   is   true  that  here 


IMMORTALITY  161 

and  there  there  are  pages  of  Plato  that  compare 
well  with  the  teachings  of  Christ,  the  parable  at 
the  end  of  the  Gorgias,  the  cave-figure  in  the  Re- 
public, parts  of  the  Symposium,  the  Phaedo  and 
the  Phaedrus,  but  turn  over  a  few  pages,  we  will 
almost  invariably  find  something  which,  tried  by 
modern  standards  of  either  morals  or  taste,  must 
be  condemned.  And  the  impression  which  Socrates 
himself  made  upon  his  contemporaries,  how  differ- 
ent from  that  made  by  Jesus !  Simon  Peter  cast 
his  fisher's  coat  about  him,  fell  at  Jesus'  feet  and 
said,  "Depart  from  me,  O  Lord,  for  I  am  a  sinful 
man."  Alcibiades  loved  and  admired  Socrates, 
and  yet  not  only  was  he  not  recalled  from  vice  by 
him,  but  he  even  expected  him  to  share  in  his 
vices,  and  when  he  was  not  successful  he  gave  him 
credit  for  being  a  paragon  of  virtue,  but  never 
thought  of  imitating  him.  Would  Alcibiades  have 
dreamed  of  tempting  Jesus? 

So  much  for  the  matter  of  Jesus'  teaching. 
What  about  the  manner?  He  taught  "as  one 
having  authority,  not  as  the  scribes."  He  never 
had  any  doubts  as  to  what  He  taught.  He  is  sim- 
ple, authoritative,  brief.  Socrates  is  fantastic, 
tentative,  his  gold  is  imbedded  in  page  after  page 
of  fanciful  and  bewildering  parable.  One  does 
not  quite  know  what  he  meant,  probably  because 
he  himself  did  not  quite  know.  How  many  more  of 
his  sayings  we  have  than  we  have  of  Christ's,  and 
yet  on  how  much  fewer  of  the  problems  of  life 
does  he  really  throw  light !     He  is  always  feeling 


168  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

his  way,  not  sure  himself  of  what  he  says.  Jesus 
speaks  with  absolute  certainty,  there  is  no  room 
for  any  other  opinion.  "If  it  were  not  so,  I 
would  have  told  you."  Socrates  thinks,  Jesus' 
knows,  Socrates  reasons,  Jesus  sees.  I  do  not 
say  that  there  never  was  a  time  when  Jesus  had  to 
think  things  out,  the  statement  that  He  increased 
in  wisdom  as  He  increased  in  stature,  may  imply 
that  there  was,  but  from  the  time  that  His  say- 
ings are  recorded,  He  spake  only  that  which  He 
knew.  It  is  just  because  Christ's  thought  is  so 
full-grown,  His  knowledge  so  absolute,  that  it 
seems  so  simple.  The  process  of  searching  for 
truth  is  often  a  complicated  one,  but  Truth  when 
found  is  always  simple. 

Indeed  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  perhaps 
the  reason  that  a  certain  type  of  intellectual  peo- 
ple prefer  Socrates  to  Jesus  is  that  they  do  not 
like  that  absolute  certainty,  they  have  a  weakness 
for  intellectual  processes.  I  remember  that  when 
I  first  taught  sociology  and  the  subject  was  com- 
paratively new  to  me,  I  was  constantly  making 
statements  which  on  further  thought,  I  would 
modify  or  even  contradict.  I  remarked  to  one  of 
my  pupils  that  I  hoped  that  in  another  year  when 
I  was  more  mistress  of  my  material,  I  would  not 
do  this  so  much.  She  replied,  "Then  I  am  glad 
that  I  am  in  your  class  this  year ;  I  like  to  feel  the 
teacher  think."  That  girl  was  more  interested  in 
my  mind,  and  in  its  action  upon  her  mind,  than  in 
the  subject  matter;  perhaps  legitimately  so,  since 


IMMORTALITY  163 

the  object  of  education  is  more  mental  development 
than  knowledge.  So  the  scholar  sometimes  pre- 
fers Socrates  to  Christ,  because  he  is  in  the  period 
of  his  life  in  which  intellectual  processes  mean 
more  to  him  than  do  matters  of  life  and  death. 
But  when  the  time  comes  that  he  needs  Christ  to 
do  "more  for  him  than  a  mere  man  can,"  He  may 
"stand  confessed  as  the  God  of  Salvation."  For 
when  it  comes  to  matters  of  vital  importance,  we 
want  the  man  who  knows,  not  the  man  who  is 
thinking  them  out.  So  when  we  ask  what  lies  be- 
yond life  and  death,  we  are  glad  that  Jesus  knew 
rather  than  thought. 

The  question  has  often  been  discussed  as  to  how 
far  the  Platonic  Socrates  corresponds  to  the  real 
Socrates.  One  thing  at  least  is  true:  Plato  was 
Socrates'  intellectual  and  spiritual  equal,  and 
therefore  capable  of  creating  him.  Nor  is  it  likely 
that  he  would  have  hesitated  to  put  his  own  opin- 
ion into  the  mouth  of  his  master;  he  would  have 
reasoned  that  all  that  he  thought  was  really  due 
to  Socrates,  for  without  Socrates  he  would  never 
have  thought  at  all.  And  ancient  plagiarism — 
if  plagiarism  it  can  be  called — was  more  noble 
than  modern  plagiarism — it  consisted  in  attrib- 
uting one's  own  thoughts  to  someone  else, 
whereas  modern  plagiarism  desires  that  someone's 
else  thoughts  be  attributed  to  one's  self.  That 
is,  the  plagiarist  of  antiquity  was  anxious  that  the 
thought  should  spread;  if  it  would  spread  better 
by  giving  someone  else  the  credit  for  it,  by  all 


164  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

means  let  him  have  it ;  the  modern  plagiarist  wishes 
not  the  thought,  but  his  own  fame  to  spread.  But 
the  disciples  of  Jesus,  poor  unlettered  fishermen, 
were  not  capable  of  inventing  Jesus,  Plato  himself 
would  not  have  been  capable  of  it.  Take  the  story 
of  his  birth  alone.  Other  religions  tell  us  of  sons 
of  God  born  of  mortal  women,  but  how  vulgar  are 
these  stories  of  actual  sexual  intercourse  between 
mortals  and  immortals !  Contrast  them  with  St. 
Luke's  vision,  "The  Holy  Ghost  shall  come  upon 
thee,  and  the  power  of  the  Highest  shall  over- 
shadow thee;  therefore  that  holy  thing  which  is 
born  of  thee  shall  be  called  the  Son  of  God."  A 
fisherman  or  an  obscure  physician  invent  that,  in 
that  age  of  bad  morals  and  bad  taste? 

And  yet  when  all  is  said,  the  heart  will  cry  out, 
If  we  could  only  be  sure,  it  would  be  so  much  easier 
to  bear  the  loss  of  our  loved  ones,  so  much  easier 
to  live  ourselves !  Perhaps  if  we  could  be  sure  we 
should  not  live  at  all.  For  living  means  for  a 
human  being  making  choices;  if  there  were  ab- 
solutely certainty,  not  only  would  there  be  no 
room  for  faith,  there  would  also  be  no  room  for 
moral  choice;  we  should  be  so  overshadowed  by 
God,  that  it  would  not  be  possible  for  us  to  exer- 
cise our  own  wills.  Perhaps  we  have  been  at  times 
in  the  presence  of  a  great  person,  and  have  felt 
stifled,  no  room  to  think,  no  room  to  will,  no  room 
to  act,  no  room  to  live.  What  if  we  were  in  the 
unveiled  presence  of  God?  Yes,  it  is  well  that  He 
should  withdraw  Himself,  that  He  should  be  the 


IMMORTALITY  165 

"invisible  God"  in  order  that  He  may  leave  "room 
for  the  newly  made  to  live,"  which  means  room  for 
them  "to  fall  into  divers  temptations,"  since 
this  is  necessary  if  we  would  be  "perfect  and  entire, 
lacking  nothing."  Yes,  it  may  have  its  use  even 
that  we  are  sometimes  forced  to  cry  out  with 
Jesus,  "My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken 
me?"  A  passage  in  Mrs.  Ward's  "Lady  Rose's 
Daughter"  strikes  me  very  forcibly.  Julie  has 
been  telling  Jacob  of  her  past  life.  Mrs.  Ward 
says  "Jacob  listened  very  humbly.  How  could 
he  ever  be  her  equal  in  experience?"  He  was  too 
sure  of  the  presence  of  God — too  protected  by 
that  assurance.  Such  characters  are  beautiful, 
but  do  we  not  sometimes  feel  that  they  are  a  little 
lacking  in  development?  Is  it  too  much  to  say 
that  before  we  can  attain  to  full-grown  perfection 
we  need  to  experience  even  that  sense  of  desertion 
which  was  necessary  to  His  perfection?  God  does 
not  desert  us  any  more  than  He  deserted  Christ, 
but  perhaps  it  is  necessary  for  us,  for  some  of  us 
at  least,  that  we  should  feel  that  horror  of  great 
darkness,  that  emptiness  and  loneliness  which  He 
felt. 

"They  have  Moses  and  the  prophets  ;  if  they  will 
not  hear  them,  neither  will  they  be  converted  (nor 
convinced)  though  one  rose  from  the  dead."  If 
historical  evidence  can  be  accepted,  One  has  risen 
from  the  dead.  And  more  than  the  accounts  of 
His  resurrection,  the  transformation  of  the  lives 
of  His  followers  is  proof  that  He  did  rise.     "The 


166  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

power  of  His  resurrection,"  we  feel  it  in  St.  Peter's 
sermon  on  the  Day  of  Pentecost,  in  the  thanks- 
giving of  the  Apostles  that  they  were  "counted 
worthy  to  suffer  shame  for  His  name" ;  in  St. 
Paul's  triumphant  cry  "Nay,  in  all  things  we  are 
more  than  conquerors  through  him  that  hath  loved 
us."  "Why  stand  we  in  jeopardy  every  hour?" 
Why  indeed,  except  that  having  known  the 
"power  of  His  resurrection,"  they  were  able  and 
willing  to  share  in  the  fellowship  of  His  suffering? 
And  yet  we  cannot  believe !  With  Thomas  we  say, 
"Except  I  shall  see  in  His  hands  the  print  of  the 
nails,  and  put  my  finger  into  the  print  of  the 
nails,  and  thrust  my  hand  into  His  side,  I  will  not 
believe." 

The  truth  is  that  no  amount  of  historical  evi- 
dence would  at  all  times,  and  in  all  moods  fully 
satisfy  us.  For  no  one  will  quite  believe  any- 
one's else  experience  in  the  matter;  there  would 
have  to  be  a  personal  appearance  of  our  dead  to 
each  one  of  us.  And  thus  the  object  of  death, 
whatever  it  is,  would  be  defeated;  in  the  constant 
intercourse  of  the  living  and  the  dead  there  would 
be  no  boundary  between  life  and  death.  "It  is 
expedient  for  you,"  said  Jesus,  "that  I  go  away." 
So  it  is  expedient  for  us  that  our  loved  ones  go 
away,  perhaps  partly  in  order  "that  the  trial  of 
our  faith,  being  much  more  precious  than  of  gold 
that  perisheth,  might  be  found  unto  praise  and 
honor  and  glory."  And  yet  He  went  away  from 
us  in  order  that  He  might  really  be  nearer  to  us, 


IMMORTALITY  167 

serve  us  better  than  He  could  in  the  flesh.  Per- 
haps our  beloved  dead  have  gone  from  us  for  the 
same  reason.  He  is  everywhere  and  always  with 
us,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world ;  they  are  where 
He  is,  are  not  they  too  everywhere  and  always 
with  us?  He  has  gone  from  us  in  order  that  He 
may  help  us,  and  He  has  given  us  the  blessed  as- 
surance that  as  we  live  our  lives  bravely,  we  help 
Him.  Do  our  dead  help  us,  and  can  they  be 
helped  by  us  in  a  similar  way? 


IX 
THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY 

When  I  crossed  the  ocean  this  summer,  it  was 
in  the  hope  that  I  might  find  in  English  libraries 
material  for  an  historical  work  which  I  have  been 
contemplating  for  many  years.  I  have  dreamed 
of  doing  a  truly  beautiful  piece  of  work,  small 
perhaps  but  as  nearly  perfect  of  its  kind  as  pos- 
sible, true,  psychological  and  artistic.  My  illness 
has  made  it  impossible  to  make  any  attempt  to 
carry  out  my  plan  at  least  for  some  time,  and  in- 
deed to  hope  that  I  shall  ever  be  able  to  do  so 
seems  like  hoping  against  hope.  Let  me  comfort 
myself  as  I  sit  in  Trinity  College  Back  with  try- 
ing to  put  into  words  my  ideal  of  the  history 
which  I  would  write  if  I  could. 

Before  I  can  do  this  I  must  ask  and  answer  the 
question,  What  is  the  function  of  history,  the  end 
which  the  historian  is  seeking  to  accomplish? 
Carlyle  once  said,  "A  nation's  true  Bible  is  its 
own  history."  And  it  is  certainly  noteworthy 
that  the  Hebrew  Bible  contains  not  only  revela- 
tions of  spiritual  truth  for  all  mankind,  but  that 
so  much  of  it  is  occupied  with  the  history  of  a 
particular  race.  No  Jewish  youth  had  a  proper 
religious  training  who  did  not  know  the  record  of 
168 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        169 

God's  dealings  with  his  race  in  the  Past,  who  was 
not  able  intelligently  to  "praise  famous  men,  and 
his  fathers  that  begat  him,"  who  could  not  "look 
back  to  the  rock  whence  he  was  hewn,  and  the  hole 
of  the  pit  whence  he  was  digged."  Was  not  this 
because  right  living  in  the  Present  must  in  part 
at  least  be  inspired  and  directed  by  the  Past? 
And  is  not  this  as  true  in  London  and  Washington 
now  as  it  was  in  Jerusalem  then?  For  if  we  are 
Christians  we  believe  that  God  directs  English 
and  American  history  now  just  as  much  as  he  di- 
rected Jewish  history  then,  that  He  who  has  be- 
come the  world's  Redeemer  is  still  a  national  Re- 
deemer, and  therefore  each  nation  should  know 
the  way  in  which  it  has  been  led  in  the  past,  in 
order  that  it  may  not  only  know  itself  better,  but 
may  also  come  to  a  fuller  knowledge  of  Him. 

And  whether  we  are  Christians  or  not  we  can- 
not help  feeling  that  the  great  spirits  of  the  Past 
must  inspire  and  direct  us  in  the  tasks  of  the 
Present,  that  if  we  would  be  worthy  successors  of 
those  who  have  gone  before,  we  must  profit  by 
their  failures  and  successes,  must  begin  to  build 
where  they  left  off.  Our  fathers  have  labored,  and 
we  have  entered  into  their  labors ;  we  are  the  baby 
on  the  giant's  shoulders;  if  we  would  be  taller 
than  the  giant  we  must  admire  and  love  him  in 
order  that  he  may  inspire  us  to  grow.  We  must 
also  know  just  how  tall  he  was  in  order  that  we 
may  know  where  to  begin  to  grow.  My  old  Ox- 
ford Professor,  Dr.  York  Powell,  in  talking  to 


170  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

English  boys  once  said,  "I  am  one  of  those  who 
think  that  if  we  are  going  to  keep  this  country 
great,  we  should  have  some  times  to  think  about 
her  great  men.  Chinese  Gordon  used  to  say  that 
the  right  book  for  young  officers  to  read  was 
Plutarch's  Lives,  and  I  am  sure  that  the  right 
books  for  young  Englishmen  and  Englishwomen 
to  read  are  books  which  tell  them  about  the  great 
Englishmen  and  Englishwomen  of  the  Past,  to 
look  back  and  see  how  such  men  as  Alfred  managed 
by  courage,  by  perseverance,  by  never  knowing 
when  they  were  beaten,  and  by  sticking  to  what 
they  knew  to  be  right  to  pull  the  country 
through." 

I  well  remember  the  first  service  which  I  ever 
attended  in  Westminister  Abbey.  I  had  made  a 
mistake  about  the  hour,  was  late  and  had  to  stand. 
I  stood  right  by  the  place  where  someone  has 
said  that  more  illustrious  dust  lies  buried  than 
anywhere  else  in  England,  under  the  out-stretched 
arm  of  Chatham,  above  the  spot  where  he  and  his 
great  son  are  at  rest.  I  do  not  remember  the 
subject  of  the  sermon,  but  in  the  course  of  it  the 
preacher  said  something  like  this,  "We  are  here 
surrounded  by  England's  illustrious  dead,  and 
they  are  crying  out  to  us  to  know  why  we  have 
not  done  more  than  we  have,  why  we  have  not 
advanced  further  beyond  what  they  did."  To  an 
American,  visiting  the  Abbey  for  the  first  time, 
feeling  so  strongly  the  truth  of  the  words  "The 
Abbey  makes  us   We"  this  was  most  impressive. 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        171 

And  truly  what  is  patriotism  but  such  a  loyalty 
to  the  Past  as  begets  a  promise  of  the  Future? 
What  is  our  country's  good  name  for  which  we 
would  fight,  but  the  mempry  of  the  lives  of  her 
great  men,  the  lives  which  "remind  us  that  we  can 
make  our  lives  sublime"?  It  has  been  well  said 
that  one  would  no  more  despair  of  one  who  loved 
the  history  of  his  country  than  of  one  who  loved 
his  parents. 

But  while  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  history 
of  our  past  should  inspire  us,  it  may  not  be  quite 
so  clear  that  it  should  direct  us.  We  are  not 
called  upon  to  do  just  as  our  fathers  did,  and  to 
attempt  to  do  so  would  be  mere  childishness,  for 
exactly  the  same  thing  never  happens  twice  in 
history,  and  if  it  did  it  would  be  under  different 
circumstances,  and  among  a  different  people.  But 
it  is  also  true  that  exactly  the  same  thing  never 
happens  twice  in  the  life  of  an  individual,  never- 
theless it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  the  indi- 
vidual does  not  profit  by  experience,  and  so  it  is 
absurd  to  say  that  the  nation  does  not  profit  by 
experience.  We  differ  from  the  savage  as  the  man 
differs  from  the  child,  because  we  have  a  Past 
upon  which  we  build,  and  by  which  we  not  only 
may,  but  must  be  guided. 

For  we  work  to  advantage  only  as  we  throw  our- 
selves into  the  stream  of  previous  human  effort ;  we 
make  progress  as  we  advance  with  that  stream, 
are  checked  as  we  oppose  it ;  we  are  able  to  trans- 
form and  develop  our  civilization  only  as  we  under- 


172  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

stand  it.  Efforts  at  reform  which  involve  a  vio- 
lent break  with  the  Past  are  generally  in  vain. 
For  the  Past  has  made  us,  therefore  so  long  as  we 
live  we  cannot  bury  it ;  we  may  think  that  we  have 
done  so,  but  sooner  or  later  it  comes  to  life  again 
and  mocks  us.  Even  in  those  rare  cases  in  which 
we  are  partially  successful  in  our  efforts  to  do 
away  with  it,  as  the  French  revolutionists  seem 
to  have  been,  it  is  at  too  great  a  cost. 

And  in  these  days  success  in  the  present  and  the 
future  depends  upon  a  proper  understanding  of 
the  past,  not  only  on  the  part  of  the  statesman, 
but  on  the  part  of  each  individual.  For  it  is  pub- 
lic opinion  that  rules  to-day,  and  public  opinion 
is  the  opinion  of  the  average  man.  The  states- 
man generally  has  very  little  to  do  with  forming 
this  public  opinion ;  he  is  more  often  formed  by  it, 
and  having  been  formed  by  it,  he  is  able  by  means 
of  his  executive  ability  to  embody  it  in  action. 
He  is,  the  wise  and  witty  Mr.  Bagehot  tells  us  "a 
man  of  common  opinions,  and  uncommon  abili- 
ties";  the  man  who  does  what  the  average  man 
wants  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  him  think,  "I  could 
not  have  done  it  any  better  if  I  had  done  it  my- 
self!" How  important  then  that  the  common 
opinion  of  the  average  man  should  be  wise  and 
safe! 

Then  if  we  know  the  truth,  the  truth  will  set  us 
free,  free  from  prejudice,  not  only  in  national  but 
in  international  affairs.  For  nations  are  wise  or 
foolish  in  their  dealings  with  each  other  largely 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        173 

as  their  understanding  of  history  is  true  or  false. 
This  is  a  point  which  Dr.  Powell  used  to  insist 
upon.  "Bulgarians  would  not  be  blowing  up 
Greeks  with  dynamite,"  he  said  in  1903,  "or 
Greeks  joining  Turks  to  cut  the  throats  of  Bul- 
garians, and  keep  Servians  out  of  Macedonia  to- 
day, but  for  history,  written  history.  My  old 
friend  Morse  Stevens  used  to  say  that  Portugal 
was  raised  from  the  dead  by  Hercolano,  a  mere 
historian.  It  is  history,  written  history  that  has 
raised  the  Baltic  nations,  that  has  made  Rou- 
mania  and  Hungary  important  European  factors, 
that  has  set  Bohemia  on  her  feet  again,  and  is 
making  a  nation  of  Albania,  that  is  keeping  Polish 
patriotism  alive,  that  has  given  the  national  spirit 
that  Russia,  the  pretended  champion  of  Christen- 
dom, in  spite  of  the  most  solemn  engagements,  is 
doing  her  vilest  to  crush.  It  is  history  that  is 
largely  responsible  for  the  unity  of  Germany,  and 
for  the  very  making  of  the  Italian  nation." 

I  confess  that  my  own  desire  to  know  and  to 
write  history  has  sprung  chiefly  from  an  intense 
interest  in  human  life.  I  want  to  understand 
people,  to  understand  the  people  of  my  own  age, 
and  the  people  of  past  ages.  I  never  feel  that 
any  time  has  been  wasted  which  helps  me  to  un- 
derstand people  better,  for  I  have  accomplished 
something  in  that  my  sympathies  have  been  en- 
larged, in  that  I  have  come  more  and  more  to 
see  life  as  something  tremendous  and  full  of  in- 
terest,  and  men   even  in  their   follies   and  weak- 


174  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

nesses  as  worth  while.  Nor  is  this  without  prac- 
tical value.  For  we  must  strive  to  promote  not 
only  right  living  between  nations,  but  right  living 
with  each  other,  hence  the  value  of  the  psycho- 
logical side  of  history,  that  we  should  know  the 
different  types  of  men,  understand  the  motives 
of  their  actions,  and  thus  be  fair  in  our  judg- 
ments. Our  relations  to  the  people  about  us 
may  make  us  unjust  to  them  at  times,  we  are  too 
near  them  to  really  see  them,  or  understand  them. 
In  studying  the  characters  of  the  past  we  do  not 
labor  under  this  disadvantage,  and  an  unpreju- 
diced judgment  of  the  men  of  the  past  may  help 
us  to  get  rid  of  our  prejudices  in  judging  the 
men  of  the  present. 

The  great  historian  of  the  seventeenth  century 
who  probably  devoted  more  time  to  trying  to 
understand  Oliver  Cromwell  than  anyone  else 
has  ever  devoted  to  trying  to  understand  any 
man,  tells  us  that  he  finds  in  him  an  epitome 
of  the  character  and  history  of  the  whole  English 
people;  that  just  as  England  has  given  material 
both  to  those  who  wish  to  consider  her  a  hypo- 
critical, land-grabbing  bully,  and  to  those  who 
wish  to  consider  her  the  greatest  agent  of  civili- 
zation that  the  world  has  ever  known,  so  Cromwell 
has  given  material  alike  to  those  who  wish  to 
consider  him  the  greatest  of  hypocrites,  and  to 
those  who  wish  to  consider  him  the  greatest  of 
saints.  I  myself  understand  Cromwell's  life  as 
Dr.  Gardiner,  both  by  his  books  and  by  the  lee- 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        175 

tures  which  I  heard  him  give  at  Oxford,  has 
helped  me  to  understand  him,  as  one  of  the 
greatest  tragedies  that  the  world  has  even 
known,  and  I  look  for  a  tragedian  to  arise  who 
will  see  that  there  is  as  much  material  for  tragedy 
in  Cromwell  as  in  Hamlet.  For  if  tragedy  be  as 
the  Greeks  defined  it,  a  conflict  of  ideals  in  a  noble 
soul  resulting  in  the  apparent  defeat  of  one  or 
all  of  them,  then  the  life  of  the  man  in  whose 
soul  the  ideals  of  Puritanism  and  Parliamen- 
tarism were  constantly  at  war,  so  that  he  was 
forced  sometimes  to  sin  against  his  conscience  in 
sacrificing  one,  sometimes  in  sacrificing  the  other, 
was  as  great  a  tragedy  as  that  of  any  man  who 
ever  walked  this  earth.  And  I  confess  that  my 
interest  in  him  does  not  arise  so  much  from  the 
fact  that  I  see  in  him  England  writ  little, 
although  I  do  see  this  in  him,  as  from  the  fact 
that  I  see  in  him  every  one  of  us  writ  large.  His 
struggles  are  our  struggles,  his  victories  and  de- 
feats are  our  victories  and  defeats,  only  they  are 
on  a  large  scale  in  order  that  we  may  see  and  un- 
derstand them. 

Of  course  the  main  object  of  history  can  hardly 
be  to  see  the  workings  of  the  human  heart,  for 
that  is  far  better  done  in  the  so-called  fictitious 
creations  of  the  great  masters  of  literature.  As 
a  child  when  a  story  was  read  to  me,  I  was 
wont  to  inquire,  "Is  it  true?"  and  great  was  my 
disappointment  when  I  was  answered  in  the 
negative.     As  I  have  grown  older,  I  have  learned 


176  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

that  there  is  a  sense  in  which  we  can  be  surer  of 
the  truth  of  a  great  novel  than  we  can  be  of  the 
truth  of  a  great  history.  For  the  character 
drawn  by  the  truly  great  novelist  is  always  true; 
he  has  lived  not  once  but  many  times,  only  he 
did  not  have  the  name  which  the  novelist  gives 
him.  But  while  I  am  sure  that  my  idea  of  Crom- 
well is  true  to  life,  that  there  have  been  and  are 
men  who  in  Cromwell's  position,  would  have  been 
actuated  by  the  motives  which  I  attribute  to 
Cromwell,  I  cannot  be  perfectly  sure  that  the 
inner  workings  of  the  mind  of  the  particular  man, 
Oliver  Cromwell,  were  as  I  would  depict  them. 
Generally  the  historian  explains  his  characters 
by  himself,  what  would  have  been  his  motives, 
what  his  train  of  thought,  what  his  inward  strug- 
gles, had  he  been  in  such  a  position.  Every  man 
has  something  in  him  of  every  other  man ;  the 
historian  tries  to  find  the  something  in  him  which 
corresponds  to  the  man  of  whom  he  is  writing,  the 
part  of  him  which  is  the  man  of  whom  he  writes, 
and  there  is  always  danger  that  he  will  find  the 
wrong  part.  Indeed  the  part  which  he  seeks  may 
have  been  all  but  trained  out  of  him  or  his  an- 
cestors, so  that  now  it  is  almost  if  not  quite  im- 
possible to  find  it.  Therefore  he  cannot  under- 
stand some  of  the  characters  of  his  history  as  he 
cannot  understand  some  of  his  contemporaries, 
because  their  reasons  were  so  entirely  different 
from  the  reasons  which  would  influence  him.  Yet 
the  fact  that  we  make  mistakes  as  to  the  char- 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        177 

acters  of  those  about  us  is  no  reason  for  ceasing 
to  try  to  understand  them,  and  I  do  believe  that 
by  industrious  study,  and  by  loving  musing  upon 
those  who  have  gone  before,  we  can  know  them  at 
least  as  clearly  as  we  can  know  most  of  the  men 
that  we  see,  and  after  all  the  child's  desire  that 
the  story  that  he  reads  should  be  true  as  he  un- 
derstands truth  has  something  in  it.  Cromwell  is 
more  of  an  influence  in  my  life  than  is  Hamlet. 

I  once  asked  a  class  in  English  history  whether 
in  the  civil  wars  of  the  seventeenth  century  they 
were  on  the  side  of  king  or  Parliament ;  they  were 
almost  evenly  divided,  but  each  could  see  and 
even  sympathize  with  the  arguments  on  the  other 
side.  If  that  had  not  been  true,  I  should  have 
been  in  despair  of  my  teaching,  for  knowledge 
involves  sympathy,  and  sympathy  involves 
justice. 

Does  seeing  the  good  on  both  sides  tend  to  make 
us  lukewarm  in  actual  life?  Then  the  teaching 
must  go  a  step  further.  Each  side  helps.  The 
liberals  help  when  they  propose  reform  measures, 
but  the  conservatives  also  help  when  they  force 
them  to  consider  them  carefully  before  passing 
them,  and  thus  do  not  allow  too  violent  a  break 
with  the  Past ;  it  is  our  part  to  help  as  our  side 
is  helping.  In  that  wonderful  collection  of 
Roumanian  folk  songs  which  Carmen  Sylva  has 
given  us  in  "The  Bard  of  the  Dimbo-Vitza,"  there 
is  a  song  bemoaning  the  fate  of  the  soldier  who 
died  too  soon  to  know  which  way  the  fight  had 


178  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

gone,  but  history  seems  to  teach  that  every 
soldier,  whichever  side  he  may  be  on,  may  die 
confident  that  what  is  good  in  his  side  will  con- 
quer. For  in  the  long  run  neither  side  prevails. 
It  is  the  good  in  both  that  is  victorious.  Straf- 
ford died  as  honorably  and  nobly  as  did  Hamp- 
den, the  one  for  order  and  the  other  for  freedom. 
England  now  recognizes  the  value  of  both. 

Finally  I  am  one  of  those  who  think  that  it  is 
not  unworthy  to  write  history  in  order  to  furnish 
pleasure.  We  enjoy  the  Old  World  largely  be- 
cause of  its  associations,  and  whatever  deepens 
our  enjoyment  adds  to  our  growth. 

To  sum  up  then,  History  is  written  that  we 
may  find  in  it  inspiration  and  direction,  and  that 
a  fuller  knowledge  of  human  life  may  make  us 
happier,  more  just  and  more  generous.  How 
then  should  it  be  written?  Evidently  the  first 
essential  is  that  it  should  be  true.  Truth,  it  has 
been  well  said,  is  the  historian's  food.  For  him 
there  is  but  one  goal,  one  test,  one  point  of  honor, 
"the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth."  No  amount  of  art  can  compensate  for 
lack  of  truth,  for  while  truth  without  art  may 
fail  to  do  good  because  it  reaches  so  few  people, 
art  without  truth  does  harm.  And  to  be  true 
both  in  letter  and  in  spirit,  it  is  necessary  to  go 
to  the  fountain-head :  the  past  must  be  studied  in 
books,  in  manuscripts,  in  monuments,  in  buildings, 
in  pictures,  in  coins,  in  every  way  in  which  it 
makes  itself  known.     The  historian  must  deem  no 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        179 

time  and  no  trouble  too  great  to  put  on  the 
ascertaining  of  even  seemingly  small  facts,  but 
he  must  discriminate  carefully  between  small  facts 
which  are  important  because  of  their  bearing 
upon  a  great  whole,  and  small  facts  which  have 
no  such  bearing.  And  he  must  have  an  open 
enough  mind  to  give  up  his  own  pet  theories  when 
a  fuller  knowledge  of  the  facts  contradicts  them. 
If  he  is  conscious  of  a  bias  in  a  certain  direction 
it  may  be  well  that  he  read  the  opposite  side 
first  and  exhaustively.  And  when  he  is  sure  that 
his  facts  are  true,  he  must  not  be  afraid  of  them. 
There  have  been  historians  who  have  thought  it 
necessary  to  bolster  up  the  truth  with  lies ;  to  do 
this  is  to  show  a  lack  of  faith  in  truth. 

The  question  comes  up  as  to  whether  the  his- 
torian should  write  with  an  ethical  purpose,  with 
the  deliberate  intention  of  influencing  mankind. 
Tacitus  answers  in  the  affirmative.  "This,"  he 
says,  "I  regard  as  history's  highest  function,  to 
let  no  worthy  action  be  uncommunicated,  and  to 
hold  out  the  reprobation  of  posterity  as  a  terror 
to  evil  deeds,"  and  in  practice  he  is  true  to  his 
theory.  But  while  I  believe  that  history  if  truly 
written,  will  perform  that  function,  generally 
speaking  I  think  it  better  that  the  historian,  like 
the  artist,  should  not  try  to  teach,  and  should 
think  as  little  of  his  influence  as  possible.  His- 
tory may  furnish  material  for  Ethics,  but  it  is 
not  a  branch  of  Ethics.  Let  the  historian  con- 
cern himself  only  with  relating  what  is  true,  the 


180  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

reader  may  be  trusted  to  find  out  the  moral  for 
himself.  I  remember  how  as  a  child  I  hated  those 
collections  of  Bible  stories,  in  which  the  author 
insisted  upon  drawing  the  moral;  they  seemed 
an  insult  to  my  intelligence.  Moreover  the  his- 
torian who  is  trying  to  teach  an  ethical  lesson, 
who  has  a  case  to  make  out  either  for  or  against 
a  man  or  a  course  of  action,  is  likely  to  stray  from 
the  truth  of  history.  So  too  the  historian  who 
has  a  philosophical  theory  to  support  is  likely  to 
graduate  from  science  into  philosophy  too  easily. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  just  as  George  Eliot 
said  that  she  loved  every  character  that  she  had 
created  except  Rosamond  Vincy,  so  the  historian 
instead  of  judging  should  love  all,  or  almost  all, 
of  his  characters. 

But  in  order  that  history  should  inspire  and 
direct  us,  make  us  just  and  make  us  generous, 
it  is  necessary  not  only  that  it  should  be  true,  but 
also  that  its  truth  should  be  read,  and  read  by 
the  many.  Hence  it  must  be  interesting.  The  his- 
torian must  be  an  artist  as  well  as  a  scholar.  If 
the  mere  researcher  has  his  value,  it  is  chiefly 
because  he  furnishes  material  which  can  be  used 
by  the  artist.  When  Charles  James  Fox  was 
asked  how  he  prepared  his  great  orations,  he  re- 
plied, "I  listen  to  the  speeches  of  a  very  dull  but 
well  informed  man,  and  next  day  I  speak  them 
over  again  for  him."  It  is  sometimes  claimed 
that  certain  historians  are  not  read  because  of 
the  amount  of  learning  which  they  have  put  into 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        181 

their  books.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  if  a 
historian  is  not  read?  it  is  generally  not  because  of 
the  amount  of  his  learning,  but  because  of  the  lack 
of  his  art.  He  has  put  too  much  work  into  his 
book  not  to  put  more;  where  scholarship  abounds, 
art  should  much  more  abound.  It  is  reported 
that  Carlyle  once  said  to  Meredith,  "Man,  ye  suld 
write  heestory!  ye  have  an  heestorian  in  ye!" 
And  every  historian,  even  to  be  true,  should  have 
something  of  the  novelist  and  poet  in  him ;  his 
imagination  should  be  as  strong  and  true  as 
theirs,  for  what  is  imagination  but  the  power  to 
see  life,  the  power  to  put  one's  self  in  another's 
place?  I  sometimes  think  that  no  better  history 
has  been  written  than  Palgrave's  "Visions  of 
England,"  for  his  visions  are  true,  and  he  has 
been  able  to  make  us  see  and  feel  them. 

I  know  that  it  is  often  claimed  that  it  is 
dangerous  to  attempt  to  write  history  artistically, 
for  the  artistic  historian  cannot  resist  the  temp- 
tation to  sacrifice  truth  to  art.  Macaulay  is 
held  up  as  a  dreadful  warning;  his  ambition  to 
write  a  history  that  should  take  the  place  of  the 
latest  novel  on  every  young  lady's  dressing  table 
is  quoted  with  reprehension,  but  after  all  the  am- 
bition was  not  in  itself  an  unworthy  one.  And 
it  is  also  to  be  noticed  that  where  Macaulay  fails, 
it  is  not  as  a  scholar  or  at  least  not  as  a  re- 
searcher; no  one  was  ever  more  painstaking  than 
he  in  the  search  for  facts  both  important  and  un- 
important; he  fails  as  a  man  and  he  fails  as  an 


182  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

artist.  He  fails  as  a  man  because  he  could  not 
free  himself  from  his  prejudices,  or  rather  because 
as  Mr.  Chesterton  would  say,  "his  prejudices 
became  postjudices."  Before  he  knew  much 
about  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  he  formed  a  cer- 
tain estimate  of  him;  when  he  knew  more  about 
the  Duke  of  Marlborough  than  anyone  else  did, 
including  some  facts  that  were  inconsistent  with 
his  estimate,  he  did  not  change  the  estimate.  He 
fails  as  an  artist  because  he  has  so  little  sense  of 
proportion ;  to  him  one  fact  is  as  important  as  an- 
other, if  only  he  can  make  a  good  story  out  of  it. 
So  while  almost  every  story  that  he  tells,  con- 
sidered by  itself,  has  artistic  merit,  his  great 
work  as  a  whole  is  lacking  artistically.  It  is 
just  this  lack  of  art,  this  lack  of  proportion,  that 
makes  it  in  some  sense  untrue;  in  giving  us  more 
truths,  he  has  given  us  less  truth.  For  so  far 
from  Art  militating  against  Truth,  it  is  art  and 
only  art  that  is  true.  Facts  are  not  truth,  they 
are  material  for  truth,  it  is  the  artist  and  the 
artist  only  who  can  so  put  them  together  as  to 
give  us  truth. 

Yet  there  is  a  danger  in  saying,  "I  will  write 
a  history  for  the  sake  of  interesting  people," 
just  as  there  is  a  danger  in  saying,  "I  will  paint 
a  picture  or  sing  a  song  for  the  sake  of  moving 
people."  For  no  true  artist  seeks  to  interest 
or  move  others ;  his  only  care  is  to  present  truly 
that  which  interests  or  moves  him.  The  painter 
or  singer  who,  having  mastered  his  technique,  is 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        183 

so  moved  by  the  beauty  of  the  subject  that  he 
would  paint,  or  of  the  song  that  he  would  sing 
that  he  must  paint  or  sing,  does  not  try  to  move 
others,  but  he  does  move  them.  So  the  historian 
who,  having  collected  his  facts,  is  so  interested 
in  them  that  he  must  find  worthy  expression  for 
them,  does  not  try  to  interest  others,  but  he 
does  interest  them.  To  be  an  historian  one  should 
care  immensely  for  history,  just  as  to  be  an 
artist  one  should  care  immensely  for  art. 

For  just  as  technique  does  not  make  an  artist, 
so  accuracy  does  not  make  an  historian ;  there  can 
be  no  real  art  which  is  not  an  expression  of  the 
artist's  soul,  so  there  can  be  no  real  history  which 
is  not  an  expression  of  the  historian's  soul. 
Therefore  it  is  essential  that  the  historian  should 
have  a  soul,  and  a  soul  that  is  worth  expressing. 
If  much  of  the  history  that  we  read  is  dull,  it  is 
generally  because  it  was  written  by  men  too  dull 
to  take  the  ordinary  interest  in  life.  No  man 
can  be  a  great  historian  who  is  only  a  historian, 
for  the  real  historian  must  be  a  student  of  life  as 
well  as  of  books.  If  a  man  understand  not  his 
brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  how  shall  he  under- 
stand his  great-grandfather  whom  he  hath  not 
seen?  In  proportion  as  a  man  is  a  specialist  of 
any  kind,  he  must  take  care  not  to  allow  his  in- 
terests to  become  contracted.  Mere  scholar- 
ship is  the  mortal  enemy  of  real  scholarship,  for 
what  kills  the  man  kills  the  scholar.  It  is  the 
sympathetic  rather  than  the  critical  mind  that  is 


184  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

profound  and  clear-sighted.  Stubbs  used  to  say 
that  he  came  to  understand  institutional  history 
as  he  served  on  committees,  and  Green  said  that 
it  was  his  pastoral  work  in  East  London  that 
helped  him  more  than  anything  else  to  realize  and 
depict  the  life  of  the  English  people. 

The  three  most  popular  English  historians  are 
Gibbon,  Macaulay  and  Green,  and  in  my  opinion 
they  are  most  popular  because  they  are  the 
three  who  have  been  most  successful  in  putting 
themselves  into  their  work.  We  know  them  as 
we  read  their  books,  not  only  their  excellences, 
but  also  their  deficiencies.  In  "The  Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire"  we  see  its  author, 
pompous,  industrious,  accurate,  brilliant,  with  a 
quick  eye  for  the  outside  of  things,  but  with 
neither  the  mind  nor  the  heart  to  see  beneath  the 
surface,  to  comprehend  the  panting  of  the  thirsty 
soul  for  that  which  satisfies,  the  longing  of  the 
tortured  spirit  for  that  which  rests.  Therefore 
he  failed  to  understand  the  real  essence  of  the 
period  of  which  he  wrote.  Therefore  he  even 
mistook  his  subject  and  called  his  work  "The  De- 
cline and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  when  he 
was  really  writing  the  story  of  the  rise  of  the  new 
nations. 

In  Macaulay's  great  history  too  we  see  Ma- 
caulay's  self  in  all  his  weakness  and  all  his 
strength.  We  become  acquainted  not  only  with 
the  good  and  brilliant  Whig,  the  man  who  never 
changed  his  mind,  whose  friends  wished  that  they 


THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY        185 

could  be  as  sure  of  anything  as  Tom  Macaulay 
was  of  everything,  but  also  with  the  good  and  bril- 
liant comrade,  the  diner-out  who  always  furnished 
intellectual  entertainment,  clever  but  never  so 
subtle  as  to  make  it  difficult  for  average  intel- 
lects to  follow  him,  and  seem!  to  share  in  his 
cleverness ;  a  generous  nature,  but  after  all  some- 
what commonplace  and  on  the  surface.  And 
why?  Was  it  not  because  although  Macaulay 
was  affectionate,  he  was  not  passionate?  his  love 
for  his  family  was  beautiful,  but  outside  the 
family  he  would  seem  to  have  had  no  strong 
affections ;  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever  fell 
in  love  or  even  had  a  very  warm  friendship ;  in- 
deed he  tells  us  that  he  preferred  the  friendship  of 
dead  authors  to  that  of  living  men.  And  the 
deepest  things  of  life  are  not  to  be  learned  by 
mere  loving;  to  know  them  we  must  not  only 
love,  we  must  fall  in  love,  and  this  Macaulay  never 
did. 

Then  take  Green,  if  not  the  most  popular,  at 
least  the  dearest  of  English  historians.  Where 
Gibbon  and  Macaulay  are  weak,  Green  is  strong. 
No  man  ever  gave  us  the  color,  the  atmosphere 
of  a  period,  the  spiritual  life  of  a  people  as  he 
has  given  it.  But  try  to  use  his  Short  History 
as  a  text-book  for  a  class  unfamiliar  with  the 
subject;  then  you  will  begin  to  realize  that  the 
outer  has  been  sacrificed  to  the  inner,  the  class 
get  the  atmosphere,  but  do  not  get  the  events.  Is 
not  this  what  might  be  expected  of  the  man  who 


186  IN  CAMBRIDGE  BACKS 

tells  us  that  because  of  the  peculiar  inwardness 
of  his  nature,  he  could  scarcely  remember  any- 
thing that  happened  in  his  own  life  before  he  was 
fifteen  years  old? 

Gifts  differ,  and  each  must  work  according  to 
the  nature  of  the  gift  that  is  in  him,  but  when 
the  truly  great  historian  comes  he  will  have  all 
the  gifts:  he  will  be  scientist,  philosopher  and 
artist  in  one,  and  his  gifts  will  be  so  co-ordinated 
that  every  chapter  that  he  writes  will  be  part  of 
the  Truth  of  God,  a  revelation  of  the  thought  of 
the  Creator  realized  in  His  creatures.  That  is 
the  historian's  aim,  and  surely  each  may  take 
pride,  if  not  in  his  own  work,  at  least  in  that  in 
which  he  believes,  and  toward  which  he  would  like 
to   minister. 


UNIVEESITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY, 
BERKELEY 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

Books  not  returned  on  time  are  subject  to  a  fine  of 
50c  per  volume  after  the  third  day  overdue,  increasing 
to  $1.00  per  volume  after  the  sixth  day.  Books  not  in 
demand  may  be  renewed  if  application  is  made  before 
expiration  of  loan  period. 


■■^^B 


52:101' 7 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


1 


